10 U.S.C. § 183a — Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Clearinghouse for review of mission obstructions

(a) Establishment. (1) The Secretary of Defense must set up a Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse, called "the Clearinghouse." (2) The Clearinghouse works under an Assistant Secretary of Defense the Secretary picks, and gets whatever staff and resources the Secretary thinks it needs. (b) Functions. (1) The Clearinghouse coordinates the Department's review of energy-project and antenna-structure-project applications that come from the Secretary of Transportation under section 44718 of title 49, and it must make sure nearby military bases are consulted. (2) It speeds up building the planning tools needed to judge whether such projects are acceptable to the Department. (3) It does any other job the Secretary of Defense assigns. (c) Review of Proposed Actions. (1) Within 75 days of getting a proper application that might hurt military operations, the Clearinghouse must do a preliminary review that: (A) judges how big, how long, and how risky any harm to military readiness would be; and (B) identifies affordable fixes the Department, the developer, or others could make to reduce the risk while still letting the project go forward. (2)(A) If the Clearinghouse finds a likely adverse impact, it sends the applicant a "notice of presumed risk" explaining the Department's concerns and inviting talks about fixes. (B) After that notice, the parties should try to find affordable fixes together. (C) This notice is only a preliminary opinion, not a formal objection under (e) — talks afterward could resolve the concerns. (3) At the same time, the Clearinghouse sends the same notice to the state's governor and asks for comments; the governor gets at least 30 days to respond and must be given enough information to understand the risk. The Secretary of Defense must consider the governor's comments and include them with the finding sent to the Secretary of Transportation. (4) If the Secretary later decides the project won't actually hurt military readiness, the Clearinghouse must tell the applicant and governor in writing. (5) The Clearinghouse must build, with other federal agencies, a review process that gives timely notice about risky projects. (6) It must set up procedures — including guidance for every U.S. military base — for handling review requests from other agencies, states, tribes, local governments, landowners, or developers. (7) It must set up early-outreach procedures so parties planning risky projects near military training routes or certain radar systems file a project layout at least one year before construction begins, giving time to negotiate fixes; any material a filer marks as proprietary or sensitive must be kept from public release. (8) If the Clearinghouse finds no adverse impact, it must tell the Secretary of Transportation, in writing within five business days, "No Part 77 concerns, national security review ongoing." (d) Comprehensive Review. (1) The Secretary of Defense must build a broad strategy addressing how these projects affect the military. (2) In doing so, the Secretary must: (A) assess how much interference these projects cause; (B) — only to guide preliminary reviews and early outreach — identify specific geographic areas, including military training routes and areas near intercontinental ballistic missile facilities, where such projects could hurt readiness, and rank the risk in each area; (C) set up procedures to first identify those areas, including public notice and comment before finalizing them, with maps and explanations; (D) set up procedures to periodically review, update, and add to those areas, again with public notice and comment; (E) after the comment period, either make the final decision on an area itself or delegate that decision to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, an Under Secretary, a Deputy Under Secretary, or — for areas near missile facilities — the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment; and (F) identify specific long-term fixes for these problems, including: (i) research and development priorities; (ii) changes to military operations to accommodate projects; (iii) upgrades to existing systems or procedures; (iv) new systems the Department or other agencies could buy, and when; and (v) changes to the projects themselves, like size, location, or technology. (3) A state's governor may suggest more risk areas within that state, which then go through the same public notice and comment process. (4) The Clearinghouse must make the risk-area data available online. (e) Department of Defense Finding of Unacceptable Risk. (1)(A) The Secretary of Defense may only object to a project after fully considering possible fixes, and only if the Secretary decides the project — alone or combined with others — would create an unacceptable risk to national security. (B)(i) For any project with structures taller than 200 feet within two nautical miles of an active intercontinental ballistic missile facility, the Secretary must find unacceptable risk unless all such tall structures are removed from the project, once a notice of presumed risk has been sent. (ii) This rule doesn't apply to structures approved before the 2024 defense authorization law, or to structures rebuilt with updated technology in the same spot. (C) Any unacceptable-risk finding must be sent to the Secretary of Transportation for that agency's report. (2)(A) Within 30 days of finding unacceptable risk, the Secretary of Defense must report to the congressional defense committees and the Senate Commerce and House Transportation committees, explaining the operational impact, the fixes considered, and why they didn't work. The report can have a classified section; the unclassified part also goes to the project's sponsor, and the Secretary may publish notice of the finding in the Federal Register. (B) The Secretary must also notify the relevant state agency of the finding. (3) Only the Deputy Secretary of Defense, an Under Secretary, or a Deputy Under Secretary may be given the job of making this finding instead of the Secretary. (4) The Clearinghouse must develop — subject to public comment — procedures for making unacceptable-risk findings, including how to weigh combined effects of multiple projects. (f) Authority to Accept Contributions of Funds. The Secretary of Defense may ask for and accept voluntary money from a project applicant. That money stays available, with no spending deadline, to pay for fixing the project's impact on military operations or studying how to fix it. (g) Effect of Department of Defense Hazard Assessment. Nothing the Department does under this section replaces the Secretary of Transportation's own required review under section 44718 of title 49. (h) Definitions. (1) "Adverse impact on military operations and readiness" means any real, likely harm to flight operations, research and testing, or training that would weaken the armed forces' ability to fight. (2) "Antenna structure project" (A) means building a structure within two nautical miles of an active missile facility that transmits or supports antennas transmitting or receiving radio signals, and that must be reported to the FAA under existing law; (B) but does not include structures built before the 2024 defense law (even if later upgraded without becoming taller), or projects tied to, or approved for use on, the same base as a missile facility. (3) "Intercontinental ballistic missile launch facility or control center" means those at Francis E. Warren, Malmstrom, and Minot Air Force Bases and their missile fields. (4) "Energy project" means a project generating or transmitting electricity. (5) "Governor" means a state's chief executive. (6) "Landowner" means someone who owns the land where a project would sit. (7) "Military installation" has the meaning from section 2801(c)(4) of this title. (8) "Military readiness" includes combat-related training or operations, including testing and evaluation. (9) "Military training route" means a route in the Military Training Route Program, run jointly by the FAA and the Department of Defense for low-altitude, high-speed training. (10) "State" includes the states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. (11) "Unacceptable risk to national security" means a structure or landfill — built, altered, or proposed — that the Secretary can show would: (A) endanger air safety tied to Department of Defense activities; (B) interfere with efficient use of airspace tied to those activities; or (C) significantly weaken the Department's ability to train, research, test, evaluate, operate, or stay ready.