6 Bases during the Cold War

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land facilities around the world: staging bases for aircraft, and processingstations for acoustic and electronic data. Regarding acoustic data, it reliedheavily on its SOSUS networks, often alternatively referred to as Caesar. These,going way back to 1954, involved networks of hydrophonic arrays which sentoceanographic and acoustic data to shore processing facilities, that is, large computeranalysis centers. These data and others were correlated at regional processingcenters (including those in Hawaii, Wales, Newfoundland and Iceland) andthen forwarded to a main processing center at Moffett Field, California, viaFLTSATCOM and DSCS satellites.52SOSUS, though augmented by other systems noted below, was the backboneof the U.S. ASW detection capability. It has been described by SIPRI as follows:Each SOSUS installation consists of an array of hundreds of hydrophoneslaid out on the sea floor, or moored at depths most conducive to sound propagation,and connected by submarine cables for transmission of telemetry.In such an array a sound wave arriving from a distant submarine will besuccessively detected by different hydrophones according to their geometricrelationship to the direction from which the wave arrives. This direction canbe determined by noting the order in which the wave is detected at the differenthydrophones. In practice the sensitivity of the array is enhanced manytimes by adding the signals from several individual hydrophones after introducingappropriate time delays between them. The result is a listeningBases during the Cold War 127İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavy“beam” that can be “steered” in various directions towards various sectorsof the ocean by varying the pattern of time delays. The distance from thearray to the sound source can be calculated by measuring the divergence ofthe sound rays within the array or by triangulating from adjacent arrays.The first SOSUS systems were completed on the continental shelf off the eastcoast of the U.S. in 1954.53 Others were later installed off both U.S. shores andat Brawdy, Wales – the Pacific Coast system came to be known by the codenameof Colossus.54 A jointly operated U.S.–Canadian array came to be centeredat Argentia, Newfoundland, others at Hawaii, the Bahamas and the Azores.55By 1974 it was stated that there were 22 SOSUS installations located alongthe east and west coasts of the U.S. and near various chokepoints around theworld – another 14 were identified by Richelson and others.56 Foreign-basedSOSUS installations were located at Ascension, in the Azores (Santa Maria), theBahamas (Andros Island), Barbados, Bermuda, Canada (Argentia), Denmark,Diego Garcia, Gibraltar, Guam (Ratidian Point), Iceland (Keflavik), Italy, Japan(sonar chains across the Tsugaru and Tsushima Straits), Norway, Panama(Galeta), the Philippines, the Ryukyus, Turkey, the U.K. (Scatsa, Shetland andBrawdy, Wales). Others have at times been operated on Grand Turk Island,Antigua, Bahamas (Eleuthera) and Barbados; and maybe on the Canary Islandsat Punta de Tero. And the U.S. may possibly also have operated still otherbarrier sonars, for instance, in the central Mediterranean from Lampedusa and/orPantelleria Islands, and on Midway Island in the central Pacific Ocean.Burrows described as follows the basic geometry of the U.S. SOSUS networkwhich monitors Soviet egress from the Eurasion bastion:There are actually two SOSUS arrays moored across the approaches to Polyarnyy;one between Norway and Bear Island, and the other linking northernScotland, Iceland, and Greenland. Submarines whose home port isPetropavlovsk are monitored by hydrophones strung from the southeastern tipof Hokkaido, along a line parallel to the Kuriles, and then up toward thenortheast, off the Aleutian coast. Still others stretch from southern Japan tothe Philippines, covering the approaches to China and Indochina. And thereare also SOSUS installations on the Atlantic side of Gibraltar, others abouthalfway between Italy and Corsica and still others at the mouth of theBosporus, off Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and not so far from Hawaii.The Navy keeps the precise locations of its SOSUS equipment a closelyguarded secret, since interfering with it would be a logical Soviet subject.57Nuclear detection58One important, but seldom commented upon aspect of the overall U.S. intelligenceeffort, was that connected with the detection of nuclear explosions. Thisinvolved several separate lines of activity.First, there was the matter of verification of existing arms control treaties,128 Bases during the Cold Warİ 2007 Robert E. HarkavyPage 35
that is, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which bans atmospheric testing,and the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1974, never ratified by the U.S. Senate(but tacitly adhered to in the manner of SALT II), which barred undergroundtesting of nuclear devices of over 150 kilotons. Second, there was the monitoringof the horizontal nuclear proliferation activities of hitherto non-nuclearstates, as well as of the non-signatory but nuclear states, China and France.Third there was the contingency of protracted nuclear war during which the U.S.would have wanted to determine the locations and frequencies of nuclear detonationson both sides and to assess resultant damage, among other reasons, toaid subsequent targeting decisions.Several interrelated systems were used to pursue the above ends, involvingsatellites, aircraft and ground stations. Use of satellites, in connection withbases, raised the question of external facilities for data down-links and commandand control; that of aircraft involved, obviously, bases as well.According to Richelson, the U.S. space-based nuclear-detection systeminvolved, variously, the various components of the VELA satellite program begunin the early 1960s, the previously mentioned DSP satellites primarily intended forearly warning of missile launches, and the NAVSTAR global positioning system.59Numerous aircraft types were used to detect airborne atomic debris left in thewake of explosions (if only the venting of imperfectly conducted undergroundblasts). One source said that these included the U-2, P-3C, C-135, B-52 and alsoan HC-130 configured as a sea-water sampler to monitor underwater nuclear tests(monitoring of plutonion-239 separation via kryption-85 analysis was presumablyalso similarly conducted). For instance, SAC’s U-2s apparently operated out ofAustralian facilities at Sale and Laverton, gathering radionuclides as part of a HighAltitude Sampling Program. These aircraft were operated by the Air Force TechnicalApplication Center (AFTAC) and could presumably have availed themselvesof virtually all the airfields normally open to U.S. use throughout the world. Someof these operations no doubt involved ad hoc staging through facilities after an“event,” and the diplomacy of access involved was obscure. But, as there was ageneral convergence of overall interest by most nations with regard to monitoringothers’ nuclear tests, access in these cases was likely to have been permissive.The Soviet Cold War naval basing structure60Before World War II, the USSR had had only very limited access to externalfacilities, perhaps solely with the forward deployment of some combat aircraft inCzechoslovakia in the 1930s. In parallel, Moscow was then only a small factorin the international arms trade, so it was not able to bank either on security assistanceor ideological ties and alliances to establish forward bases. That situationchanged dramatically after World War II, with an additional quantum jump inthe late 1950s and on up to 1970s.Directly after the war, of course, Moscow established control over EasternEurope (earlier also in Mongolia), and these dominated areas became the sitesfor a massive network of Soviet air, naval and ground facilities, with a heavyBases during the Cold War 129İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavyconcentration in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia as anobvious correlate to Soviet political control over these countries and as a defensiveglacis or possible springboard for offensive operations vis-à-vis NATOWestern Europe. Again, the basis for basing access was simply brute conquestand imperial control.For some ten years after the end of the Cold War, the USSR had no basingaccess outside of its huge contiguous Eurasian empire. Indeed, it also had virtuallyno arms transfer or security assistance relationships outside this area duringa period in which the U.S. established its elaborate structure of alliances andarms transfer relationships all around the Eurasian rimland.That all changed around 1955 with the beginning of the Soviet weaponstransfers to Egypt and Syria. But then too in the late 1950s and early 1960s,numerous nations in the wake of decolonization and the creation of nominallyMarxist regimes, became Soviet arms client states. Along with that, sometimeswith a time lag, came the provision of basing access at a time, also, whenMoscow was beginning to build a “blue-water navy.” And, some of the newarms recipients and basing hosts involved a “leapfrogging” of the containmentPage 36Page 37
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6 Bases during the Cold War

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