The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, commonly referred to as the Reagan Test Site (formerly Kwajalein Missile Range), is a missile test range in the Pacific Ocean. It covers about 750,000 square miles (1,900,000 km2) and includes rocket launch sites at the Kwajalein Atoll (on multiple islands), Wake Island, and Aur Atoll. It primarily functions as a test facility for U.S. missile defense and space research programs. The Reagan Test Site is under the command of the US Army Kwajalein Atoll, or USAKA.
The mission control center, along with most of the personnel and infrastructure, is located at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Eleven of the atoll's islands are operated by the U.S. military under a long term lease with the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Equipment installed at the test site includes various tracking radars, stationary and mobile telemetry, optical recording equipment and a secure fiberoptic data network via the HANTRU-1 undersea cable. The Reagan Test Site also serves as a tracking station for manned space flight and NASA research projects.
Launch activities at the test site include ballistic missile tests, ABM interception tests, meteorological sounding rockets and a commercial spaceport for SpaceX at Omelek Island.
Previous names for the installation:
- Naval Station Kwajalein (Post WWII–1959)
- Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kwajalein (1959–1964)
- Kwajalein Test Site (1964–1968)
- Kwajalein Missile Range (1968–1986)
- United States Army Kwajalein Atoll (1986–1991)
- Kwajalein Missile Range (1991–1999)
- Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site (1999–present)
Famous quotes containing the words ronald reagan, ronald, reagan, missile, defense, test and/or site:
“Well, I learned a lot.... You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Though a censure lies against those who are poor and proud, yet is Pride sooner to be forgiven in a poor person than in a rich one; since in the latter it is insult and arrogance; in the former, it may be a defense against temptations to dishonesty; and, if manifested on proper occasions, may indicate a natural bravery of mind, which the frowns of fortune cannot depress.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)