Eyes Toward the Sky

To the senses of human groundlings, a missile traveling at 16.000 m.p.h., a bomber flying at 65,000 ft., or an armed satellite spinning 200 miles high is clear out of this world. Yet each is now, or could soon become, a potential carrier of death for the 200 million inhabitants of the U.S. and Canada. Someone must see such hostile flights--and in good time.

Developing such omnivision is the job of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), headquartered in the shadow of Pike's Peak at Colorado Springs. NORAD also must react defensively to what it sees, and give warning to U.S. and Canadian citizens to head for their shelters--if they have any. Established four years ago, NORAD has recently acquired new techniques to meet the growing threats. It can now detect almost anything bigger than a bird in the air over some 15 million sq. mi. from Iceland to Midway.

Each morning at 8 o'clock, three briefing officers, microphones about their necks, stand under a 31-ft. battle screen in a windowless concrete building and crisply summarize everything that has been projected on that screen in the past 24 hours. One recent morning report indicated that NORAD had spotted seven Soviet aircraft tracks over Siberia, 17 unidentified planes above North America (each was checked as friendly within five minutes), 121 satellites and pieces of satellite debris in orbit around the earth, and 20 Russian trawlers cruising off Newfoundland's Grand Banks and the Aleutians.

Open Secret. Two years ago, NORAD had no way to locate either missiles or satellites. Now, under the prodding of General Laurence Sherman Kuter, 56, commander in chief of the Pacific Air Forces from 1957 to 1959, NORAD can do both. At Thule, Greenland, two powerful beams fan northward over the Arctic from four antennas, each the size of a 3O-story building. While still ascending, an enemy missile would pass through the low-altitude beam, then the higher one, providing a fix for computers to crank out its speed, direction, probable point of impact. Fifteen minutes before the missile could land, the combat operations center in Colorado Springs would be warned. The word would flash instantly to the White House, the Pentagon, Ottawa, regional air-defense commanders, the Strategic Air Command and Civil Defense officials.

This ability to spot a missile is the result of a mammoth effort. It took 2,900 firms two years to build and equip the Thule station and three years to build a similar station at Clear, Alaska. Both were turned over to NORAD on New Year's Day, 1962. A third station under construction at Fylingdales Moor in England will complete this Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS).

To detect satellites, NORAD has a new electronic fence across the Southern states of the U.S. Its transmitters hurl radio energy hundreds of miles from the earth; its receivers catch satellite reflections for quick triangulation and tracking. It has detected space junk as small as a 14-ft. strand of wire from an old satellite. Says Captain Orville Greynolds, a spacetrack officer in Colorado Springs: "No one could launch a space vehicle and keep it a secret. We are positive we have checked and tracked all Russian objects now in space."

NORAD has also completed a four-station, $113 million Eastern extension to its 4 1/2-year-old Distant Early Warning radar, which now stretches some 4,500 miles across the Arctic to provide aircraft detection. Just supplying the DEW line takes $14 million a year, involves 45,000 tons of cargo, shipped by air, tankers, LSTs and barges. Backing up the DEW lines are the mid-Canada line of radar stations on the 55th parallel, along with gap-plugging, low-altitude radar eyes spotted throughout the U.S. and Canada, seagoing picket ships, airborne radar and Texas towers.

The system is such that a NORAD officer can point to a mark on the headquarters battle map, indicating a plane above Siberia, push a readout button and, in seconds, learn the plane's height, speed, direction and how long it would take to reach any major U.S. city. If a strike should come, NORAD's fighter-interceptors are so equipped that a single commander on the ground can, through computers, coordinate hundreds of them in a defensive attack.

Frets & Fears. For all its wonders of communications, coordination and electronics, there are some gaps in NORAD's shield--and no one is more aware of them than NORAD's integrated U.S. and Canadian staff, which is directly responsible to the U.S. Joint Chiefs and the Canadian Chiefs of Staff Committee. NORAD directs some 50 fighter-interceptor squadrons, and has absorbed the former Air Defense Commands of the two countries. Most of the detection system's aircraft-seeking radar and all its missile-hunting antennas are poised toward the north, in logical anticipation of a possible polar strike. This leaves the U.S. flanks with little protection, despite the fact that many Soviet submarines have missiles that could reach at least 43 of the 50 largest U.S. cities, containing 85% of U.S. indus trial capacity. The Navy's antisubmarine net is not considered tight enough to fend all of them off.

While NORAD estimates that it could knock out 70% of any attacking bomber force with interceptors and Nike-Ajax, Nike-Hercules and BOMARC missiles, it can do nothing at all to stop an enemy missile after it detects one. For that reason General Kuter, in flat disagreement with most Air Force brass, urges speedy development of the Army's controversial Nike-Zeus anti-missile missile. Says he: "We urgently need something, even though catching the enemy's missiles after he has thrown them and at the last minute is a poor way to play ball."

No one has ever expected NORAD to perform the miracle of knocking down everything that an enemy might throw at the U.S. But by probing the skies, sound ing the warning, and blunting the effect of any attack, NORAD is performing, with increasing proficiency, its main function: to mesh with the Strategic Air Command's long-range bombers 'and U.S. retaliatory rocket power to convince an enemy that the cost of aggression would be exorbitant.

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