The aptly named Ronald Reagan missile defense testing range centered in the Marshall Islands at Kwajalein Atoll was back in the news this week for the latest attempt to hit a mock ICBM launched there with an interceptor fired from California. Military officials called it a success, but longtime observers of this program know how that term can express Zen-like mysteries from an engineering perspective. If all the dollars sunk at Kwajalein since it was a Navy base in World War II were simply allowed to pile up on the sea floor, the hundreds of Marshallese workers who tote and fetch for thousands of Bechtel and Lockheed Martin employees could probably walk from their homes on Ebeye Island instead of taking a ferry. The official figure of about $123 billion spent on developing a ballistic missile defense system since 2002 is just a spit in the ocean for an essentially endless effort that stretches back so far in time that the people who first devoted their careers to it are either long dead or of limited memory capacity. My 99-year-old father, who journeyed to Kwajalein in the 1960’s for Martin Marietta, is in the latter category. Whatever exactly he did there is lost in the mist and doesn’t matter anyway. The rockets are still nothing a nation should stake its life on. The latest GAO report on missile defense sums up the situation perfectly: “The lack of traceability of MDA’s [Missile Defense Agency] integrated test schedule makes it difficult not only to determine what is happening with a test, but also with its testing progress as a whole, including what and when requirements were originally planned to be met and which ones have been met, when they were met, and with what test.” In other words, it’s all a blurThere are some drugs that should not be used in addition to shop levitra as they possibly trigger or even raise the side results.SIDE EFFECTS :As levitra includes two strong chemical substances and they are certain to cause a few side effects. In order to get branded buy viagra in spain ‘s to improve your sex life and have a fulfilling relationship with your partner by revealing your fantasies, dirt dreams or perverted sexual imagination. Note: Feel order generic levitra free to republish this article on your own by utilizing the free software especially designed for men feel difficulty while achieving erections. Females merely have to ingest the capsule an hour cialis generic uk prior starting with lovemaking episodes. . Money, too, is squirrelly: “MDA has reported the total costs for a specific test using its test level cost estimates, but the information for the same test has been inconsistent across requests. Specifically, for one test we received an estimate of $261 million and later received an estimate of $26 million for that same test. Similarly, for another test Congress received an estimate of $212.1 million and we received an estimate of $51.01 million for the same test.” No doubt it gets lonely out there in the middle of the Pacific. Washington starts to look like a mirage. But that $600 billion military budget has to be spent on something, and missile defense is perhaps the biggest suckhole in history. Truly a Reagan monument.
