Kwajalein Atoll and the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site
Kwajalein Atoll and the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site
Kwajalein Missile Range was then the western terminus of the Pacific Missile Test Range. Today it is formally known as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site. What hasn’t changed between 1969 and today is Kwajalein’s function as a facility that tests the accuracy of U.S. ICBM missiles and their Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) nuclear warheads. For more than half a century it has also been testing the efficacy of anti-ballistic missile missiles designed to track, intercept, and vaporize incoming hostile ICBM nuclear warheads. That so-called exercise of “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” was hard to do 50 years ago, and it hasn’t gotten any easier since with the recent Chinese and Russian development of hypersonic missiles.