The tinkling of cowbells appears like a song between mastic and myrtus communis. It is the only sign of life in this distant land, only a promise left. The herds of yesteryear here have disappeared with the explosive gait of a future that does not dream, it tears apart. The few cattle that still scratch on the edge of the war, waiting to break into the secret areas, see the horizon with the bewilderment of resignation. After all, they have seen all the colors, they and the shepherds, in these lands violated forever. The landscape flows slowly in the heart of the Salto di Quirra, Perdasdefogu, extreme and forbidden Sardinia. Few roads, all winding. Hermitage boundless and forbidden. The story tells of a state raid when the sixties had not yet known the dawn. It was 1956, late July.

Livestock and hopes

They took everything and everyone away, cattle and hopes, men and women. The videos of that time, marked by the passing of time on the ancient celluloid, imprint in the memory frames as strong as they are dramatic. Those sheepfolds emptied, the herds requisitioned, the pastures occupied and surrounded by endless signs and barbed wire as if Guantanamo had moved here. Rome's dreams for the lands of Ogliastra, nestled in the Sarrabus-Gerrei county, were from the beginning those of a deserted island, to be used and consumed, a sort of state annex to be squandered without a tomorrow. In the palaces of power, military and beyond, they had very clear ideas: to transform that ravine of Sardinia into their Wallops Island, an islet of just over 16 square kilometers on the east coast of the United States of America, in Accomack County , in the state of Virginia.

Marines & Shepherds

Despite the seven thousand kilometers away from the Salto di Quirra, Sardinian American history travels on the same pavement. In that remote landscape at the far end of the United States, close to the merciless Atlantic Ocean, "four cats" grazed some sheep, some cattle and ponies. All this until the mid-40s. With the excuse of scientific exploration and the favorable position towards the sea, in 1947, the very powerful Navy of the United States of America, that of the Marines, occupied without too many pleasantries more than two thirds of that island. The goal was no secret: to turn that enclave into the launch base for aviation artillery tests, translated war missiles. Sheep and cattle disappeared in the blink of an eye, and the ponies left the Island too. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the NACA, precursor of NASA, arrived shortly after the war missiles. Space agents rented the remaining four square kilometers and began firing rockets and satellites into the sky.

Beyond the hemisphere

Ten years after the invasion of the American island on the other side of the hemisphere, in the land of Sardinia, between Perdasdefogu and Quirra, the trucks of the Air Force forever loaded shepherds and flocks, entire families and all kinds of living beings. The beauty of 120 square kilometers evacuated, ten times the area occupied by the Marines in distant Virginia. The difference was not insignificant: there were four cats, in the Sardinian proscenium, on the other hand, many more, in addition to an inhabited island, a territory with exclusive beaches, immersed in the most imaginative geological somersaults on earth. The two opposite poles, that of Quirra and Virginia, met for the first time 61 years ago. It was January 1961 when the National Research Center, Cnr, and NASA decided to launch a coordinated series of lithium-sodium cloud launches, carried out with American Nike-Cajun missiles, from the bases of Wallops Island in Virginia and the Salto di Quirra in Sardinia. The objective was apparently entirely scientific: to measure the atmospheric currents at high altitudes, simultaneously observing the lithium-sodium clouds from various ground stations, seven of which were Italian, five in Sardinia.

The bitter reality

The reality, in the following years, became quite another. The attempt to use space research to mitigate the real core business of the joint polygon of the Salto di Quirra soon left the field free to war, the bloodiest one, made up of experimentation without rules, of deadly weapons used with impunity to devastate the environment and human lives. It is the story that tells of exercises without restraint, with bare hands and full lungs, those perforated by nanoparticles, heavy metals and even radioactive thorium. Always inside this Sardinian polygon named, Italian owned, the secrets are mysteries. Today, as then, we try to spend the word of state in favor of painless missions, capable of arousing the frenzy of the most advanced scientific research, in order to hide the true war mission. Mysteries collected in thousands of official cables, armored in the secret rooms of the Quirra polygon.

Seaport

Here, in this land that was once of undaunted mountain climbers, goats combed like few in the wind of Sardinia, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find out who really devastates these interminable canyons between plateaus and rare valleys. An inaccessible mountain, transformed, in reality, into a sea port. Here, in military secrecy, everything arrives, armies from half the world, killing factories that produce missiles and bombs, drones and deadly explosives of all sizes. All to be experienced in the land of Quirra. Something escapes the delivery of silence, see the missile "Mars Er" capable of hitting a ship at 100 km, but much more remains strictly omitted, hidden, armored. The only witnesses, unaware and silent, are those few head of cattle that still guard those few clearings around the gymkans imposed by the level curves that trace the strictly military roads that cross the mountains to the sea. Not even a check point that regulates the transit on those curves to the bitter end. Almost a tacit attempt to make everything appear normal. Attempt, in fact.

The secret of Zona Torri

In reality, when you arrive in the Torri area, (map, photo 5) the most compromised area of the entire polygon, forever marked by that unpunished environmental disaster, caused by explosions and cyclopean toxic clouds, you realize that the mysteries are contained within horizon. On the one hand, the rust of the old missile launch base, still vertical, while up there, on a square of a few hundred square meters, at the end of the climb of brambles and mastic trees, you can see what you do not even imagine in the Quirra polygon.

Camouflaged

The camouflage of the ordinance, speckled as even in Iraq, is not enough, that patch of green that surrounds the strategic positioning is not enough. It is useless for the chosen point to be among the highest and most invisible ones on the horizon. Those four vertical cylinders, erected like missiles, are not feeders for livestock, they do not contain water or even fuel. They are placed like a real anti-missile system inside Quirra's heart. A battery of missiles, complete with autonomous pointers and radars, directly connected to those four gigantic cylinders with top covers ready to be thrown to the afterlife, should the man's hand decide to trigger the departure of those missiles. They are there, still, motionless. Unrecognizable, undeclared and above all without a clear provenance.

The Turkish case

The shape is not that of the missile batteries supplied to Italy, which declares them to be of another kind, square and non-cylindrical, and neither does NATO seem to have this type of ballistic missile capable of shielding the attack of other missiles or of planes. It is here that the mystery of that positioning in the heart of Quirra leaves the most unexplored scenarios open. Certainly in Europe the tension is rising everywhere, but it is unthinkable that that positioning, and that type of missile battery is a coincidence. Obviously, given the secrets of the shooting range, official denials will appear, and as often happens it will be said that these are means of peace.

Proof

The photos we publish (1 and 2), however, are proven proof of that missile base, not a field of flowers. It is enough to compare the images of Quirra with photos 3 and 4, to understand the total similarity with the Turkish missile batteries, those of the latest generation. This is where a detail is triggered on which it will be impossible to have confirmations and, perhaps, even denials. A real tussle with the United States is taking place over these missile batteries in the hands of Erdogan. Turkey is the only NATO member state, and therefore can be exercised in the Sardinian shooting ranges, which is equipped with the Russian S-400 missile systems, similar or even identical to those located in the Sardinian polygon. Missiles capable of striking at a distance of 400 km and up to 30 km of altitude, with a 360-degree operation. Russia has signed a 2.5 billion dollar contract with the Turkish caliph for the supplies of its missile systems, sending the United States into a rage.

The US blitz

It is a pity, however, that a real reversal of the scenario is underway in the American Senate. A Republican senator has, in fact, submitted to the maximum assize in the military field of the United States, an amendment that seems to be shared by many experts, with which he suggests buying those Russian missiles right through Turkey. A technological war that in recent days has forced the Russian Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation to take a stand: «To export military products, a buyer of our weapons must submit a declaration by the end user to the Russian side. That is why it is impossible to transfer or re-export these products to third countries without official permission from the Russian side. " The US newspaper Defense News believes in the operation: Senator Whip John Thune, an expression of the majority of the Senate, has proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the American weapons plan, which would allow the purchase of S-400 air defense systems of Russian-made from Turkey using the US Army Missile Procurement Account. The Ukrainian crisis slows down the operation, but certainly on the peaks of the Salto di Quirra that ballistic system remains a mystery, like the many buried in that land of Sardinia transformed into a war border.

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