-- The White Sands Missile Range showed off its new Test Operations Center for the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.

The grand opening started with, appropriately, a robot cutting the ribbon on a new technology testing center. It was a new day for the ever-evolving White Sands Missile Range.

"Now we are getting ready to do a transformation of a monumental kind, with Future Combat Systems, with our partners at Holloman and Fort Bliss," said Thomas Berard, Director of White Sands Missile Range.

The afternoon was a display of what lies ahead for the missile range, which included showing off the future of combat and hopefully the neccesity of the program.

"Every American understands that technology is evolving at a very fast pace, and yet we are not letting the development of our weapons to keep up with that, and FCS is going to be a continual development of the weapons systems themselves," said Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico.

Senator Pete Domenici said this is huge for Southern New Mexico.

"A significant breakthrough in the application of the range in a big, big military project, and that's what this is -- a gigantic project," said Domenici.

And something that not just the state needs, but the nation needs.

"It's what we desperately need, to fight a war of the kind we are fighting against the terrorists we are fighting against," said Domenici.

While it has yet to be proven if FCS will be beneficial in the end, in the short run it will bring jobs and money to the area.

"Ultimately there will be over 3,000 soldiers, as part of the EVC Team, on the industry side. We intend to add somewhere in the neighborhood of 100, to 200 jobs over the next to years," said Dennis Muilenburg, vice president of Boeing Combat Systems.