KWAJALEIN, Marshall Islands — There are nights when the skies above this remote atoll are streaked with what seem to be strange shooting stars, burning with unnatural brightness and rumbling like thunder. Every now and then, there are stunning displays as the flares hurtle off in different directions, moving among scattered clouds as they trace serpentine paths in the sky. Such celestial spectacles are not meteors from the heavens, but test warheads from ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). Since 1959, about one thousand missiles have been launched toward Kwajalein, where the U.S. Army’s Strategic Defense Command operates one of the world’s most sophisticated ranges for tracking space vehicles. The missiles, nearly all of them launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, soar hundreds of miles above the Pacific, releasing non-nuclear test warheads that splash down in or near the “world’s largest catcher’s mitt"--Kwajalein’s 950-square-mile, crescent-shaped lagoon.
