Ballistic Missile Early Warning System
Encyclopedia
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) was the first operational ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
detection radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
. The original system was built in 1959 and could provide long-range warning of a ballistic missile attack over the polar region
Polar region
Earth's polar regions are the areas of the globe surrounding the poles also known as frigid zones. The North Pole and South Pole being the centers, these regions are dominated by the polar ice caps, resting respectively on the Arctic Ocean and the continent of Antarctica...
of the Northern Hemisphere
Northern Hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...
. They also provided satellite tracking data. The three installations are:
- Site I- A United States Air ForceUnited States Air ForceThe United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
facility at Thule Air BaseThule Air BaseThule Air Base or Thule Air Base/Pituffik Airport , is the United States Air Force's northernmost base, located north of the Arctic Circle and from the North Pole on the northwest side of the island of Greenland. It is approximately east of the North Magnetic Pole.-Overview:Thule Air Base is the...
, GreenlandGreenlandGreenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
,
(76.569°N 68.318°W) - Site II-A United States Air ForceUnited States Air ForceThe United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
facility at Clear Air Force StationClear Air Force StationClear Air Force Station is a United States Air Force Station located 5 miles south of Anderson, Alaska, USA, northeast of Mount McKinley, and southwest of Fairbanks. Its primary mission is to detect incoming ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.-Overview:Clear AFS is operated by the...
, AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
,
(64.2561°N 149.1855°W) - Site III - A Royal Air ForceRoyal Air ForceThe Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
facility at RAF FylingdalesRAF FylingdalesRAF Fylingdales is a Royal Air Force station on Snod Hill in the North York Moors, England. Its motto is "Vigilamus" . It is a radar base and part of the United States-controlled Ballistic Missile Early Warning System...
, in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
,
(54.3616°N 0.6697°W)
The three facilities operated their original 1950s vintage radars for more than four decades, but all have been upgraded with more modern phased array radars. The facility at Clear Air Force Station was the last to be upgraded and now operates a PAVE PAWS
PAVE PAWS
PAVE PAWS is a United States Air Force Space Command radar system operated by three 21st Space Wing squadrons for missile warning and space surveillance. Operational PAVE PAWS radars are located at:...
radar that was moved from Eldorado Air Force Station
Eldorado Air Force Station
Eldorado Air Force Station located 35 miles south of San Angelo, Texas and was one of the four unique AN/FPS-115 PAVE PAWS, early-warning phased-array radar systems...
in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
in 2001. Information received from the BMEWS radars is forwarded to the JFCC SPACE Missile Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain Air Station
Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain is a mountain located just outside the southwest side of Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., and is home to the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and its Cheyenne Mountain Directorate, formerly known as the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center .Throughout the Cold War and...
, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, where it is coordinated with data from other sensors, including other PAVE PAWS sites.
Operations
Joint Electronics Type Designation System
The Joint Electronics Type Designation System , which was previously known as the Joint Army-Navy Nomenclature System and the Joint Communications-Electronics Nomenclature System, is a method developed by the U.S. War Department during World War II for assigning an unclassified designator to...
/FPS-50, with four (at Site 1) or three (at Site 2) fence antennas for initial detection, each 165 feet (50.3 m) tall and 400 feet (121.9 m) wide, and UHF range/425 MHz AN/FPS-49, later upgraded to AN/FPS-92, fully steerable tracking dish, 85 feet (25.9 m) in diameter, installed in a large radome. One fence antenna covered a 40-degree sector of the horizon, for a total site coverage of 120 degrees.
A prototype of BMEWS, located in Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
, began providing surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
and tracking of ballistic missiles by 1958, and went operational on February 4, 1959, to gather data on missiles fired at the Atlantic Missile Range, as well as satellites and meteors. The full BMEWS radar network became operational in the early 1960s. Each site had dual IBM 7094 computers for signal processing and impact prediction.
RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
manufactured and maintained the electronics utilizing an RCA 501 computer with 32k "high speed memory", 5-76KC 556 bpi 3/4" tape drives and a 200 track random access LFE
LFE
The low-frequency effects channel is the name of an audio track specifically intended for deep, low-pitched sounds ranging from 3-120 Hz. This track is normally sent to a speaker that is specially designed for low-pitched sounds called the subwoofer...
drum to maintain wire connection lists at RCA's Astro Electronics Division facility in Hightstown, NJ. Every wire was able to be traced from origin to destination with software and the weight of the cable interconnecting cabinets was automatically calculated by an RCA 501 machine language program named "signal path" written by Robert Goerss, computing facility director.
A fully characterized signal, designating an incoming missile, was known among the engineers as a "Q point". Having a "Q point" emerge on the screens meant that missile warning systems and missile defense systems would be activated. The designation arose because on the flow charts used to indicate how radar signals were processed, the full designation of an incoming missile was achieved at Point Q on the chart. Therefore, engineers rarely spoke of missiles, but instead talked about Q Points.
The system at Thule was erected on permafrost, i.e., permanently frozen ground. The antennas were built atop large concrete platforms -- about the size of a football field, for the detection antennas. Concrete cures exothermically, so that pouring that much concrete would have caused the permafrost to melt and the concrete pad thus to sink or tilt. To counter that problem, one of the largest refrigeration systems ever built was installed, with the refrigeration piping embedded in the concrete when it was poured. The refrigeration was operated steadily from the first moment of pouring concrete until the entired pour had solidified and cured. This cooling offset the heat of the concrete curing, stabilizing the platforms. The system had no use after the concrete had cured, and this massive refrigeration system was therefore scrapped after a single use.
The Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
developed a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System
Fractional Orbital Bombardment System
The Fractional Orbital Bombardment System was a Soviet ICBM program in the 1960s that after launch would go into a low Earth orbit and would then de-orbit for an attack. It had no range limit and the orbital flight path would not reveal the target location...
(FOBS) in part to counteract the network of sensors covering the northern hemisphere, including BMEWS, which was only able to point in a fixed direction. FOBS placed a warhead in low earth orbit
Low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...
, reducing the line-of-sight ranges tremendously compared to the traditional "lofted" trajectories of a conventional ICBM. Additionally, the FOBS could be launched southward, overflying most of the globe and then approaching the U.S. from the south, where it would be invisible to BMEWS. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles also avoided detection by BMEWS, developing into a credible threat in the 1970s. The Defense Support Program
Defense Support Program
The Defense Support Program is a program of the U.S. Air Force that operates the reconnaissance satellites which form the principal component of the Satellite Early Warning System currently used by the United States....
(DSP) early warning satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
s were developed in part to counter this threat, detecting the infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
"bloom" from the launch rockets no matter where they occurred.
Moon alarm
On October 5, 1960, the moonMoon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
rise occurred directly in the path of the Thule detection radar, producing a strong signal return. While the computer system never generated an impact prediction, the large amount of data caused enough concern that the equipment was subsequently modified to reject moon returns based on their long (2.5 second) delay.
Upgrades
The Thule and FylingdalesRAF Fylingdales
RAF Fylingdales is a Royal Air Force station on Snod Hill in the North York Moors, England. Its motto is "Vigilamus" . It is a radar base and part of the United States-controlled Ballistic Missile Early Warning System...
sites were upgraded with phased array
Phased array
In wave theory, a phased array is an array of antennas in which the relative phases of the respective signals feeding the antennas are varied in such a way that the effective radiation pattern of the array is reinforced in a desired direction and suppressed in undesired directions.An antenna array...
radars in the 1990s.
BMEWS 3, located in RAF Fylingdales, was upgraded by Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
/Cossor AeroSpace and Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
at a cost of US $100M. The new antenna was a three-faced phased array antenna providing 360 degrees of coverage. The embedded computer was a CDC-Cyber running JOVIAL
JOVIAL
JOVIAL is a high-order computer programming language similar to ALGOL, but specialized for the development of embedded systems .JOVIAL is an acronym for "Jules Own Version of the International...
.
The Clear, Alaska, site was upgraded in 2001 with a PAVE PAWS
PAVE PAWS
PAVE PAWS is a United States Air Force Space Command radar system operated by three 21st Space Wing squadrons for missile warning and space surveillance. Operational PAVE PAWS radars are located at:...
radar that was originally located at Eldorado Air Force Station
Eldorado Air Force Station
Eldorado Air Force Station located 35 miles south of San Angelo, Texas and was one of the four unique AN/FPS-115 PAVE PAWS, early-warning phased-array radar systems...
, Texas. The phased array radars operate in the 420-450 MHz (UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...
) frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
range.
Along with the PAVE PAWS radar sites at Cape Cod Air Force Station
Cape Cod Air Force Station
Cape Cod Air Force Station is a US Air Force station located in the northwest corner of the Massachusetts Military Reservation, USA, on Flatrock Hill...
on Cape Cod, Massachusetts41.7524°N 70.5386°W, Beale Air Force Base
Beale Air Force Base
Beale Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located approximately east of Marysville, California. Originally known as Camp Beale....
, California39.1361°N 121.3506°W and the PARCS radar at Cavalier AFS, North Dakota48.7246°N 97.8998°W, the BMEWS sites provide continual ground-based missile warning for the United States and Canada, with satellite surveillance as a secondary role.
See also
- White Alice Communications SystemWhite Alice Communications SystemThe White Alice Communications System was a United States Air Force telecommunication link system constructed in Alaska during the cold war. It featured tropospheric scatter links and line-of-sight microwave radio links...
- Nuclear weapons and the United StatesNuclear weapons and the United StatesThe United States was the first country to develop nuclear weapons, and is the only country to have used them in warfare, with the separate bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War it conducted over a thousand nuclear tests and developed many long-range...
- PAVE PAWSPAVE PAWSPAVE PAWS is a United States Air Force Space Command radar system operated by three 21st Space Wing squadrons for missile warning and space surveillance. Operational PAVE PAWS radars are located at:...
- Globus IIGlobus IIGlobus II is a radar station located at in Vardø, Norway, near the Russian border.-Purpose and use:The site is administrated by the Norwegian Intelligence Service who state the radar is used for:*Space surveillance...
- Missile Defense Alarm SystemMissile Defense Alarm SystemThe Missile Defense Alarm System was an American system of 12 early-warning satellites that provided limited notice of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile launches between 1960 and 1966...
- Defense Support ProgramDefense Support ProgramThe Defense Support Program is a program of the U.S. Air Force that operates the reconnaissance satellites which form the principal component of the Satellite Early Warning System currently used by the United States....
- United States Space Surveillance NetworkUnited States Space Surveillance NetworkThe United States Space Surveillance Network is a critical part of United States Strategic Command's mission and involves detecting, tracking, cataloging and identifying artificial objects orbiting Earth, i.e. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentation debris...
- Distant Early Warning LineDistant Early Warning LineThe Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland...
- North Atlantic Radio SystemNorth Atlantic Radio SystemThe North Atlantic Radio System was a chain of five tropospheric scatter communication sites that stretched from Iceland to RAF Fylingdales, forming an extension of the Distant Early Warning Line .-Development:...
- ACE HighACE HighACE High was a NATO communications system which dates back to 1956. The system was decommissioned in the late 1980s, and its frequencies reallocated for commercial radiotelephone service. The system was designed to be an L-band troposcatter radio system, which was meant to provide long-range...
- Pinetree LinePinetree LineThe Pinetree Line was a series of radar stations located across the northern United States and southern Canada at about the 50th parallel north, along with a number of other stations located on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Run by NORAD , over half were manned by United States Air Force...
- Mid-Canada LineMid-Canada LineThe Mid-Canada Line, also known as the McGill Fence, was a line of radar stations across the "middle" of Canada to provide early warning of a Soviet bomber attack on North America. It was built to supplement the less-advanced Pinetree Line, which was located further south...
- List of USAF Aerospace Defense Command General Surveillance Radar Stations (SAGE)
- Joint Surveillance SystemJoint Surveillance SystemThe Joint Surveillance System is a joint United States Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration system for the atmospheric air defense of North America...
(JSS)
-
- Specific US radar and locations
- Cobra DaneCobra DaneThe AN/FPS-108 COBRA DANE radar is an active electronically scanned array installation operated by the United States Air Force at Eareckson Air Station on the island of Shemya, Alaska. This radar system was built in 1976 and brought on-line in 1977 for the primary mission of intelligence gathering...
, Eareckson Air StationEareckson Air StationEareckson Air Station is a United States Air Force military airport located on the island of Shemya, in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. It was closed as an active Air Force Station on 1 July 1994, however the airport is still owned by the USAF and is operated by the USAF 611th Air Support Squadron...
, AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait... - Thule Air BaseThule Air BaseThule Air Base or Thule Air Base/Pituffik Airport , is the United States Air Force's northernmost base, located north of the Arctic Circle and from the North Pole on the northwest side of the island of Greenland. It is approximately east of the North Magnetic Pole.-Overview:Thule Air Base is the...
, GreenlandGreenlandGreenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for... - Clear Air Force StationClear Air Force StationClear Air Force Station is a United States Air Force Station located 5 miles south of Anderson, Alaska, USA, northeast of Mount McKinley, and southwest of Fairbanks. Its primary mission is to detect incoming ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.-Overview:Clear AFS is operated by the...
, AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait... - RAF FylingdalesRAF FylingdalesRAF Fylingdales is a Royal Air Force station on Snod Hill in the North York Moors, England. Its motto is "Vigilamus" . It is a radar base and part of the United States-controlled Ballistic Missile Early Warning System...
, United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... - Cape Cod Air Force StationCape Cod Air Force StationCape Cod Air Force Station is a US Air Force station located in the northwest corner of the Massachusetts Military Reservation, USA, on Flatrock Hill...
, MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010... - Beale Air Force BaseBeale Air Force BaseBeale Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located approximately east of Marysville, California. Originally known as Camp Beale....
, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area... - Cavalier Air Force StationCavalier Air Force StationCavalier Air Force Station is a United States Air Force installation in Pembina County, North Dakota, home to the 10th Space Warning Squadron of the 21st Space Wing based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.-Mission:...
, North DakotaNorth DakotaNorth Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S.... - "Texas TowersTexas TowersThe Texas Towers were a set of off-shore radar facilities used by the United States Air Force during the Cold War that were modeled on the offshore oil drilling platforms first employed off the Texas coast...
" North Atlantic offshore radar platforms
- Cobra Dane
- Specific US radar and locations
External links
- Historic American Engineering Record (Library of Congress) (HAER AK-30-A) - Clear Air Force Station, Ballistic Missile Early Warning System Site II
- A detailed personal account of BMEWS
- Global's Space Systems information with pictures
- BMEWS Program overview from 1997