6 Bases during the Cold War

towards an arms-supply relationship with the USSR. Still earlier the U.S. apparentlyhad a similar SCF on Zanzibar Island, within Tanzania.Strategic early warning50One of the most obviously critical areas of intelligence involving foreign basesis strategic early warning, that is, warning of impending or unfolding nuclearattack. Here, as in so many areas of military endeavor, the U.S. was asymmetricallydependent on foreign access, and crucially so. Indeed, it was long the case,even before the advent of intercontinental missilery, that the U.S. relied onradars in Canada and Greenland for warning of approaching bombers at a timewhen such warning could provide several hours of response time. The asymmetrieswere partly because of the larger relative size of the USSR and partlybecause of the location of critical foreign terrain – Canada, Greenland, Iceland –between the U.S. and the trans-Arctic routes that would be traversed by missilesand bombers across the arctic regions between the superpowers.Several key U.S. early-warning systems utilized foreign access; ground stationsused to relay data from early-warning satellites; the BMEWS radar systemdirected against Soviet ICBMs, the several layers of radar pickets used to detectbombers en route to the U.S. from the Arctic region; and a variety of othersensors which might be used in collateral or supplementary roles.Regarding early-warning satellites, the U.S. relied primarily on what havebecome known as DSP East and DSP West (earlier these were called MIDASsatellites). The former had the primary task of watching for ICBM launches, thelatter for SLBM launches in the Atlantic.The Code 647 Defense Support Program satellite – DSP East – sat some23,000 miles above the Indian Ocean in geosynchronous orbit, monitoring theeastern hemisphere. It contained an infrared telescope equipped with thousandsof tiny lead-sulphide detectors designed to pick up the hot exhaust flame producedby large rocket engines during the boost phase of their flights. It had fullcoverage of Soviet missile fields from an orbit more or less above the equatorand, in the case of mass launchings, could tell what kinds of missiles had beenlaunched and from where. Hence, DSP East could also provide valuableinformation about what kind of attack had been launched, that is, the likely targetingmix. That would in turn have guided the targeting of a U.S. counterforceresponse.The principal and necessary link between DSP East and NORAD was thedown-link facility at Nurrungar, Australia (there were also control and trackingfunctions at Pine Gap and on Guam) described as a highly vulnerable set ofantennas, transmitters and computational facilities. This “readout station” in turnwould relay data to NORAD, variously by underseas cable, by HF radio links orvia the Defense Satellite Communications System, and in turn via a switchingstation in Hawaii. These various alternative communications links between Nurrungarand Buckley AFB in Colorado involved foreign access to New Zealand,Fiji, Norfolk Island and Canada’s British Columbia at Port Alberni. In recentBases during the Cold War 125İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavyyears, however, another down-link for DSP East (called the Simplified ProcessingStation) had been made operational at Kapaun, FDR Germany.A second major U.S. strategic warning system used to monitor ICBMlaunches was BMEWS, which comprised three major radars (located at Clear,Alaska, Thule, Greenland and Fylingdales Moor, U.K.). These radars becameoperational in 1950 and had 4800-km ranges. The BMEWS facility includedfour AN FPS-50 detection radars and an AN/FPS-49 tracking radar – these alsoacted as contributing sensors for the SPADATS system. Altogether, there were12 radars with ranges of 4800 km.Finally, the U.S. had long relied – primarily for warning of the approach ofbombers – on the series of radar picket lines across the Arctic known as theDistant Early Warning (DEW) and Continental Air Defense Integration North(CADIN) Pinetree lines. These had been located across Alaska, Canada andGreenland, with a few additional outposts in Iceland and the Faeroe Islands (the126 Bases during the Cold WarTable 9 Location of DEW Line and CADIN Pinetree Line radar sites in Canada andGreenland, 1985DEW LinesPage 32Page 33