 Wasn't that something? Well, you get that kind of performance only when you team up a highly skilled aviator, a fine airplane, and a complete weapon system that works. Now, this is the Sparrow 3 missile, just like the one that clobbered that target drone. It's deadly, and it has proven under combat conditions that it's reliable. Now, making certain that weapons work the way they're supposed to is the principal job of this big Navy-managed Department of Defense complex here at Point Magoo. Now, how do the people here at Point Magoo go about making certain that weapons systems work? Now, frankly, it's not easy or inexpensive. As an American taxpayer, you're a stockholder in a specific missile range, and we're going to show you how your money is being invested in the dividends you're earning. Almost 100 new weapons and missile systems have been tested and evaluated here at Point Magoo and out on the Pacific Missile Range, which is headquartered here. Not only Navy weapons such as Shrike, Walleye, Sidewinder, Bullpup, Talos, Tartar, and Sparrow, but Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army Weapon Systems, and NASA space vehicles. And that doesn't include the range's supportive fleet operations. Right now, there are about 10,000 people hard at work here at Point Magoo and out on the range. Among them are some of the country's finest scientists, engineers, and technicians. They're working on around 175 weapons testing programs and are spread out over 27,000 acres of real estate. Maybe it would help if we explained how the Point Magoo complex is organized. Now, the boss command here at Point Magoo is the commander Pacific Missile Range. Now, we'll tell you more about him shortly. The other organizations based here are the Naval Missile Center and the Naval Air Station. Now, they're separate organizations, but are directly under the command umbrella of the commander Pacific Missile Range, as is the PMR facility Hawaiian area. In other words, each of these organizations has its own boss, but their boss is the range commander. The exceptions are Air Development Squadron 4, a fleet outfit, and the Navy Astronautics Group, which is just a tenant here at Point Magoo, but for a very good reason, as you will see. Now, let's take a look at some of our property. The headquarters and some of the most important operating facilities of the range here at Point Magoo cover about 4,600 acres. 55 miles off the coast, we have another 13,000-acre facility. San Nicholas Island. We also have other island property. San Miguel Island, 9,000 acres. At least 84 acres on Santa Cruz Island, plus a range facility at the Marine Corps Air Station, Kanioi Bay Oahu, and other facilities in the Hawaiian area. At Barking Sands Kauai Island, we have a 2,000-acre base. 800 miles west of Honolulu, we have a 5-acre site on man-made Akku Island, just off Johnson Atoll, a 6-acre facility on Midway Island, a 4-acre base on Wake Island. We also have a fine mobile instrumentation base in our range ship USNS Wheeling. Now, all this adds up to a lot of property. Around 27,000 acres. You may be wondering, does the range really need all this real estate? Well, the answer is yes. We do need it for important reasons. We need it for safe unpopulated areas for operating and impacting dangerous weapons, for sites for the vast complex of range equipment and support facilities, including airfields. And most important of all, we need these big areas uncluttered with civilization's jungle of electronic signals so that we can effectively exercise remote electronic control over an arsenal of flying weapons and satellites constantly being tested or monitored. The Pacific Missile Range is one of six great national ranges, continent-sized shooting galleries for the launching, tracking, and collecting of data on guided and ballistic missiles, space vehicles, and satellites. Now, this range also supports fleet operations in the testing of new sea-launched airborne weapons. This is the PMR headquarters. That's the president of our organization. His title is actually Commander Pacific Missile Range. But his function is roughly equivalent to that of the chief operating officer of a large corporation. He is a Navy flag officer, a rear admiral. You pay him a salary of about $18,000 a year to manage your half-billion-dollar business. The admiral has an executive vice president, a senior Navy captain with the title of Vice Commander PMR, a range director, and a staff of 20 officers and senior civilians to help him run your range. PMR provides all the facilities and talent needed to test and evaluate anybody's weapons or missiles. But they don't own a single weapon or missile themselves. They're strictly a service organization. And since range customers come from many government agencies, they're sometimes a waiting list. The Point Magoo Complex will provide land, sea, undersea, or air-launching facilities for their customers at San Miguel Island or at Barking Sands. This is the hydro concept of launching missiles directly from the water. It is under development by the Naval Missile Center. The missile is fired underwater, so there is less danger from any explosion that could occur. Before you test-fire a missile to gather data on its performance, you should know all you can about the environment in which it'll be operating. To make sure there'll be no surprises as to the condition of the weather, the sea and the upper atmosphere, the geophysics division of PMR's operating department gathers and analyzes information from the edge of space to the bottom of the sea. All the environmental information gathered from all sources is fed into this computer for reduction, analysis, and is used to prepare a forecast. The environment for launching the bird is gold. So for safety, a vast area of sea and sky is cleared of traffic and kept clear. Any instructions fed a missile after it's launched to change course, to shut off its motor, to destroy itself, are relayed by radio. Thus, a stray radio signal on the same frequency from any outside source could set off radio-controlled equipment. Now, to see that this doesn't happen, the area is monitored with electronic equipment to ensure that all signals are within specified limits and uses, as well as detecting those stray or unauthorized radio signals. Monitoring facilities also maintained by PMR include mobile instrumented vans and specially equipped planes, which serve as the airborne arm of a system of complex mobile and ground station radio signal detection sites. Transmission receiving antennas are kept focused on the bird. For if anything should go wrong, this officer would destroy the bird instantly by pressing this button. Precision optical tracking cameras and sensitive radars record a precise track of the missile's flight behavior. Gathering information on and from the missile while it is in flight is a vital function of the range. Dozens of miniature sensing instruments on and under the skin of the missile, and even in the heart of its fiery engine. Pick up, convert, and transmit signals on pressure, temperature, speed, vibration, and other data. These amplified signals are picked up by sensitive telemetry antennas and fed into a vast array of electronic equipment in the Missile Control Center. Another Pacific missile range capability is integrating and analyzing information from radars, optical equipment, and underwater detectors to pinpoint the exact location where a missile, airplane, or spacecraft impacts. In a matter of minutes, divers can be on the spot to recover the object. The missile flew the planned course and hit the target area, but the big question is still unanswered. How reliably did each of its thousands of components perform? The answer is being tallied here as these computers reduce the volumes of information collected from launch to impact and from reports made after microscopic examination of a recovered missile. Only then can a judgment be made on the missile's reliability, and only after dozens or even hundreds of such firings will they certify that the weapon works, that is ready for use by our combat forces. Certainly one of the range's most important customers is the fleet. At PMR's Barking Sands facility in the Hawaiian area, there are building range facilities that will provide full instrumentation of weapon performance during anti-submarine warfare exercises. For the first time, our submarines and warships will be able to know precisely how their ASW weapons perform under realistic operating conditions and how to improve their aim. Our range's mid-specific facilities at Johnson, Midway, and Wake get plenty of business from a wide range of customers. Maybe the customer is NASA with a spaceship circling the Earth every 90 minutes. PMR helps track it and relay instructions. Or the Air Force, with an intercontinental range ballistic missile being fired from a Bandenberg Air Force base to impact 5,000 miles downrange, or a fleet warship that needs an instrumented flight on one of its surface to air missiles. Whomever the customer, whatever his requirement, PMR can do the job. Or if PMR doesn't have the instrumentation to measure whatever the customer wants measured, to record what he wants recorded, then PMR scientists, engineers, and technicians simply build an instrument that will do the job. In fact, demands change so rapidly that a major part of PMR's overall effort is devoted exclusively to designing, constructing, and testing new equipment that will enable the range to carry out its mission. Now, one of the range's busiest customers is the Navy's own Naval Missile Center. For the center's principal job is to test and evaluate naval missiles, particularly those launched from aircraft, such as Shrike, Walleye, Phoenix, and Sparrow. Now, some of you may think of this as a jet plane with a missile hung on its launcher, but it's more than that. The Navy describes it as the Sparrow 3 weapon system. That's because the Sparrow 3 missile, the F-4B airplane that carries it at twice the speed of sound, and the sophisticated missile control equipment, communications equipment, and sensing devices located on board the plane all function as a single integrated unit. These things, all of them, have to work together properly if you expect to score bullseye. Now, the Navy doesn't intend for any airborne Navy weapon system to be put into the hands of fleet personnel whose lives may depend upon its reliability, until that weapon is shown at works under test conditions that are far worse than it will ever encounter in the fleet. Let's take a look at some of the tests the weapon has to pass here at the Naval Missile Center to make the grade. Migration, humidity chamber, weapon system, and at the Naval Missile Center, he is tested and evaluated along with other components of the system. His reaction and performance in flight are monitored and measured. His handling of equipment is carefully studied. And his capabilities and limitations are calculated both physically and psychologically. For example, how does noise affect his performance? How seriously does high and low temperature affect the man, and the overall effectiveness of the weapon system? Performance data on the tolerances of the human part of the system is carefully measured. And sometimes, these tests prove men to be tougher than metals and electronic equipment. In this unworldly chamber, the radar reflectivity of missiles and aircraft is measured. This information is valuable in target detection and identification. The Missile Center has a development program going to study and test electronic countermeasures that target aircraft use in jamming radars. The center is also coordinating with fleet units in evaluating electronic warfare techniques, looking for ways to counter the countermeasures. To prove a weapon works, it has to hit a target, usually a flying target. The Missile Center provides 18 different kinds of targets which fly at various speeds and altitudes for Pacific Missile Range customers. The Naval Missile Center handles more target activity than any other organization in the world. Targets are also supplied for fleet training operations all year round. To perform its job, the Naval Missile Center uses many planes. And these have to be kept in top shape. More than 500 military and civilian men are needed to repair and maintain aircraft, including some of the strangest-looking planes on Earth. You need performance photographs for the record. The Naval Missile Center's Photographics Department takes all kinds of pictures, both photo and underwater and animal pictures. In fact, photo documentation of everything of significance that happens within the Point Magoo complex. And finally, after all the testing and evaluating is done, someone has to write down what happens so others will know. That also is the job of the Center's Photographics Department, which provides art and writing services to both their own organization and to the Pacific Missile Range. This weapon system has successfully met all its technical evaluation requirements. It's about ready to be delivered to the fleet, but something more is needed. How do you most effectively employ this system? What techniques and procedures do you use to get the best performance? Now, that's the job of Air Development Squadron 4. Air Development Squadron 4, or VX-4, as it's called, is a fleet operational unit. Its roster includes some of the Navy's finest fighter pilots. VX-4's biggest job is developing fighting tactics that fully utilize the potential of an airborne weapon system such as Sparrow 3. Squadron pilots are old hands, this sort of thing. They've done it for most of the Navy's air-launched guided missile systems, weapons such as Sidewinder, Bullpup, and Sparrow. There's no seat of the pants techniques left in modern air-to-air combat. Many of these pilots are aeronautical engineers. Others are experienced test pilots, and their approach is strictly professional. VX-4 pilots find out and prove out the best way to hit the enemy and avoid getting hit yourself. In today's electronic environment, with surface-to-air missiles and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns, the combat pilot must be a real pro to survive. The pilots in Vietnam are aggressive and successful. Much of the credit for their success belongs to the Air Development Squadron 4. Another organization in the Poynmagoo complex is the Navy Astronautics Group that operates a new system of navigation by satellite. Today, spacecraft orbit the Earth broadcasting navigation information as they go. With it, units of the fleet can pinpoint the positions that see far more accurately than ever before. This new system works anywhere on Earth, day and night in any kind of weather. It pays off by supplying our Polaris submarines and far-ranging service horses with precise navigation fixes at all times. The Navy Astronautics Group operates a nationwide network of ground tracking and injection stations. Tracking stations, like this one in Maine, report the orbits of all system satellites to headquarters at Poynmagoo. The status of each satellite on the station is displayed in the control center. Latest tracking data is used in the computer center to prepare new navigation information to be sent to each satellite. Predictions, time to come true, the instant they are broadcast, telling where the satellite will be in orbit from minute to minute throughout the day ahead. This tracking and injection station on Laguna Peak above Poynmagoo injects enough data in just a little more than a quarter of a minute to keep a satellite broadcasting for another 16 hours. A board ship, a navigation set automatically processes the satellite signals. At the same time that it receives data telling where the satellite is, it measures a frequency change during reception to locate the ship in relation to the satellite. The two factors are related to print out an instant fix, latitude, longitude and time in a matter of seconds. This marks the first use of space in direct support of fleet operations. Now you know all the things, or at least some of them. The organizations here at Poynmagoo perform for others. But while they're taking care of others, who takes care of them? Who makes the coffee, prepares the meals, operates the airports, sweeps the streets, takes care of the sick and performs a thousand other essential jobs that keep a great military base going. These tasks, all of them, are the assignment of the Naval Air Station in Poynmagoo. NAS's busy military and civilian employees feed 3,500 people daily. Provide facilities for dental services, as well as a dispensary for emergency and routine medical care. Provide a well-equipped gymnasium to encourage physical fitness programs. Operate an airport where 156 planes land or depart daily. Provide crash crews and base fire protection. Operate search and rescue facilities. Run all the support facilities at San Nicolas Island. Operate the target recovery craft. Furnish and maintain all kinds of transportation. Provide quarters for service personnel and supply what is needed, where it is needed. Also maintain a chapel to fill the spiritual needs of various denominations. The Poynmagoo complex is valued on the books at approximately $350 million. Now, this year, if costs run about the same as in the past few years, it's going to cost you millions of dollars to operate this Poynmagoo complex. Now, is it a good investment? What dividends are you earning on it? Plenty. You are getting the best, most accurate and effective weapons in history. Weapons that are saving the lives of Americans. You know, most of the enemy planes shot down have been knocked out of the skies with weapons tested right here at Poynmagoo on the Pacific Missile Range. Weapons that work. And most of the ground targets destroyed have been destroyed with weapons proved right here. Weapons that work. And most important of all, the great gray ships of our fleet are now armed with weapons that were tested, modified, checked, retested, and rechecked here at Poynmagoo until it lasts. The fleet was told, all right, now you can take them. But when you need to use them, these are weapons that will work.