| [For example: The SAGE building at McGuire Air Force Base, circa 1958. On the far left are cooling towers for the generators located in the (low) middle building. The "cube" has four floors, with air conditioning and wiring on the ground, the computers on the second floor, offices on the third and the combat center on top.] |
The SAGE intercept direction center known Duluth Air Defense Sector (DUADS) was only one of a whole host of defensive intercept fire control centers originally designated, but it began covering a much larger area in 1963 when it merged with Sault Ste. Marie Sector (SSMADS, to the east) and another sector to the west.
An old map
| where I added red boundary lines to give you a rough idea of the area that we were controlling. What we did is like the setting of the movie "War Games," and I'll bet you saw it. The plot of the movie was preposterous, and the ghost track episode that I described in my letter was the only thing I ever witnessed that might be called an incident. Granted, the ghost was was coming straight toward our blockhouse, but we were on it immediately. Also, no one in that blockhouse believed that a single bomber would attack the US in any effective way; it wouldn't have survived long enough to reach the US/Canadian border. |
The two main war rooms were Surveillance, where the radar input data were assembled into a map (i.e., battle intelligence) and Weapons, where interceptor missiles and manned fighter planes were directed to the targets on that map. There was also a small room where track identification was performed, where an unknown would stand out. We were all classified as "weapons controllers," and the dais platforms in those two rooms were no-lone zones (two officer rule), because our Bomarc missiles were tipped with tactical nukes. The surveillance dais had three commissioned officers:
RICMO - Radar Inputs and Countermeasures Officer (electronic warfare)
TO - Tracking Officer (in charge of the tracking teams).
ASO - Air Surveillance Officer (in charge of the entire Surveillance Room)
I served both as RICMO and (later) as ASO. More later. I have to go to a meeting.
You really ought to elaborate a little on the ghost track because if you don't, people are going to think it was some kind of flying saucer/UFO thing! It had a perfectly rational explanation, and the Staff Sgt. RICMT (radar inputs and countermeasures technician) got it right from the beginning (I really credit the man for clear thinking): The long range search radars scanned clockwise, just like the weather radars you see on most local TV weather channels. The new radar was painting an inbound airliner flying northwest to southeast (it eventually passed almost directly over the radar site). Our search radar painted that real object the way it was supposed to, with the antenna pointing to the northwest. But there was a metal building almost due north of the radar, and the FPS-27's transmitted power was so high that radar energy scattering from that building (i.e., by reflection) also bounced off the same plane and returned to the radar by the scattering path, except that the second path only happened with the radar antenna pointing north (i.e., toward the metal building). This resulted in a ghost signal in the northward direction. Because pulse travel time was virtually the same by either path, the northward ghost track painted at the same distance from the radar site, and it certainly looked real, coming right at the radar site! The fix involved removing the building.
What I told you in that first letter actually happened, and it stands out in my memory as a real life (though perhaps lackluster) version of the kind of thing the movie "War Games" tried to portray. In War Games the war room people couldn't discern between what was real and what was not, and the computer could do unacceptable things without human intervention. We could always intervene, even if it meant shutting something down (After the ghost track incident, the new FPS-27 was shut down and the old FPS-20 was turned back on). The ghost track incident shows that real and unreal are sometimes possible to confuse. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, a Major at the radar site didn't believe all those incoming radar returns were real, so he didn't act on the information. He could have saved the day. I think he ended up with a court martial.
Reiterating the one thing that still dominates my memories of the SAGE system: [One night shift, when I read the hot file, I noticed that a new FPS-27 had come on-line that day (I think it was at Armstrong, pretty much due north of DUADS). We had settled in for the evening, when the track identification line buzzed: "What's that uncorrelated data doing up there?" The TO had just prodded the responsible technician, and the active tracking began as the identification officer spoke. "There isn't supposed to be anything up there." We had an unknown. I got out of the ASO chair and moved to the RICMO position. The technician said it before I did: "I think it's some kind of ghost track. See this track coming down from the northwest on the trans-Canada airway? It has the same distance outward from the new radar." I replied, "Yeah, I think you are right." He moved to the RIM monitor (I didn't have to tell him to) while I called the radar site and requested that they put the FPS-26 on the northward track. The 26 found nothing, and the RICMT affirmed that the new search radar was the only one painting the unidentified. I called the SD and told him "It's not a real track, Sir. That's a brand new radar on line, and it's probably a reflection from something on the ground, nearby (later, it turned out to be a metal hut north of the new radar)." He replied, "You better be right, Wright!" But the thing went all the way to NORAD, and two interceptors went up there to confirm empty sky. I don't think the RICMO position ever needed a commissioned officer.]
The FPS-26 was a powerful height finder radar, one with some serious antijam capabilities. SD (actually SWD) was the Senior Weapons Director, the one in charge of the whole weapons room. Most of us referred to the SWD as "Senior Director." The WD (Weapons Director) had a lot to do with targeting decisions.
More later on my views of antijamming.
