the time that general abramson the first director said go which was in may of 1985 and that seems like a long time ago now but until the intercept which we executed in september of 1986 was 16 months. from the. now, no one argues that the system that we developed were ready for production and in fact they were prototypes to demonstrate that you could do what you were trying to do at all in our first interceptor weighed a ton. literally, it weighed a ton. that is not technically traceable and that is not. the point is to demonstrate that you can do it at all. as pt barnum once famously said about waltzing bears the miracle is not how well that their waltzes pathetic and waltz at all. in developing new systems have to move at that kind of the piece. think one at 17 not 35 when you talk about our development is not. the s35 is proving to be an incredible weapons platform and an incredible were fighting. no one wants to repeat that acquisition cycle and neither the government nor the contractor want to repeat that acquisition cycle. my answer and my long-winded answer to your question is t

from the time that lieutenant general abramson, the first director of missile defense agency said go, which was in may of 1985, seems like a long time ago now, until the intercept which we executed in september of 1986, was 16 months. from nothing. now, no one argues that the systems that we developed were ready for production. in fact, they were prototypes to demonstrate that you could do what you were trying to do at all, our first interceptor weighed a ton, literally weighed a ton. that's not tactically traceable. that's not the point. the point is to demonstrate that you can do it at all. as p.t. barnum said once famously about waltz bears, the miracle is not how well the bear waltz, but that it can waltz at all. so in developing new systems we have to move at that kind of a pace. you know, think f-117, don't think f-35 when you talk about our development pace. the f-35 is proving to be an incredible weapons platform and war-fighting platform, but no one wants to repeat that acquisition cycle. neither the government nor the contractor want to repeat that acquisition cycle. so my a