membership: it was believed that Ukraine would have received an invitation to a Membership Action Plan during the summit, followed by an invitation to join in 2008 and membership in 2010. According to political scientist Taras Kuzio the summit showed that Georgia rapidly moved ahead of Ukraine in its drive to join NATO, even though it joined the Intensified Dialogue program a year later than Ukraine, because president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko failed to support a pro-Western Orange revolution coalition following the Ukraine's parliamentary elections of March 2006. In other words, Ukraine showed more ambivalence in its desire to join NATO, whereas in Georgia the pro-Western Rose Revolution coalition remained united. NATO Response Force NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced that the NATO Response Force was finally fully operational since all capabilities necessary were in place. The force is believed to be capable of performing missions worldwide across the whole spectrum of operations (such as evacuations, disaster management, counterterrorism, and acting as "an initial entry force") and can number up to 25,000 troops and should be able to start to deploy after five days' notice and sustain itself for operations lasting 30 days or longer if resupplied. The heads of state and government also agreed to share the costs of airlift for the short notice deployments of the Response Force. 2010 Theatre Missile Defence In September 2006, NATO selected an international consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to build an Integration Test Bed for the Alliance's future Active Layered Theatre Missile Defence (ALTBMD) capability. After two months of negotiations, ALTBMD Programme Manager, General (Ret) Billard, and SAIC contracting Officer, Mr. Robert Larrick, signed the contract on the first day of NATO's Riga Summit. This decision was based on an unpublished report agreed upon earlier by NATO ministers following a study into the feasibility of theatre missile defences. This programme is one of three programmes that NATO is pursuing in the area of missile defence. The contract puts the Alliance on track for having, by 2010, a system to protect troops on missions against ballistic missiles. The contract is worth approximately 75 million EUR for work that would be conducted over a period of six years. The theatre missile defence would be a multi-layered system of systems, comprising early warning system sensors, radar and various interceptors. While NATO member countries would provide the sensors and weapon systems, NATO