The executive order establishing the Missile Defense Agency, and mandating that we will begin installing "National Missile Defense" by 2004, allows the agency to ignore existing testing and evaluation procedures. This guarantees that we will have "missile defense" by 2004, whether it works or not. The Department of Defense is not amused, as they know they will be blamed if the system is later shown to not work. Meanwhile, the companies that are building all this technology can simply say they were just following orders, and happily working away on multibillion dollar contracts.