You've probably guessed by now that this is the Missile Site Radar. We also have a Don-2N radar station of a similar design in Sofrino. So what is so special about this American radar? There is one interesting feature and it is not at all technical. $ 6 billion was spent on the construction of this radar in the 70s, and when the construction of this gigantic structure was completed along with a military missile base and put into service, the next day the US Congress decided to stop work on the project. The entire base, including the radar, was dismantled and mothballed.
Why did it happen?
In 1967, Robert McNamara announced the start of work on the "Sentinel" program, aimed at protecting US territory from a nuclear missile attack. The system was based on the Nike-X program and included two echelons of interception - external, transatmospheric, using long-range missiles "Spartan", and internal intra-atmospheric, using short-range missiles "Sprint".
It was assumed that the system will provide confident protection of American territory from a limited missile attack. During this period, communist China was considered the most likely potential aggressor: American experts believed that while the Soviet leadership understood the danger of an atomic war and would not risk the outbreak of one, the Chinese political elite was much less adequate and could use nuclear blackmail for foreign policy tasks. It was assumed that, for technical and economic reasons, China would not be able to deploy a significant arsenal of long-range missiles, and the missile defense system would be able to defend against a Chinese attack.
In addition, the task of the Sentinel system was to protect strategic objects on the territory of the United States - command centers, ICBM basing areas, strategic aviation airfields and submarine missile carrier bases - from the threat of a "disarming" strike. The atomic strategy of that time believed that the enemy (the USSR or the PRC) could try to deliver a sudden nuclear strike of limited power using carriers with a short reaction time - ballistic missiles of submarines, or orbital atomic charges - in order to cover the American nuclear arsenal in positions before how the launch commands will be sent. These fears were fueled by intelligence data on the creation of its own missile defense systems in the Soviet Union. In the event that most of the American ICBMs were disabled by a disarming strike (which was unlikely,but perhaps) even existing missile defense systems would be able to neutralize the few remaining missiles.
Finally, the system reduced the likelihood of starting a full-scale war due to the accidental launch of a ballistic missile, or because of the deliberate provocation of a third party (again, China was considered as such, which had an incentive to provoke a conflict between the USSR and the United States). A missile defense system could stop such a limited strike and give both sides time to resolve the situation peacefully.
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The deployment plans involved the creation of seventeen anti-missile bases in the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). Four of them were intended to protect the Minuteman ICBM deployment airbases, two to cover naval bases and radar complexes in Alaska and Hawaii, the other eleven to protect the largest population centers, including Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago. Detroit, Albany, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Seattle: Given the range of the Spartan interceptor missiles, this meant that the entire US was de facto receiving anti-missile cover.
The Sentinel program was developed from 1963 to 1964, and in the course of work, the main architectural solutions for the future Safeguard were created. However, as the program developed, significant problems began to arise:
- The creation of an absolutely reliable missile defense system was still not possible
- The deployment of even a limited global missile defense could spur the USSR to a new round of the arms race, to which the United States would be forced to respond
- Even in the ideal case, the system protected only limited areas (even the largest settlements) from a limited attack
- Although the external (extra-atmospheric) echelon of anti-missile defense did not pose a danger to the civilian population, detonation of warheads of the internal (intra-atmospheric) echelon of defense could be dangerous for the protected territories themselves.
- Finally, the deployment of such a system would in itself stimulate the enemy to launch a preemptive strike in the event of any conflict - since the enemy would fear the threat of a disarming strike from the United States (whose missile defense would help them neutralize a weakened enemy retaliation).
In 1967, the US Department of Defense announced a revision of its perspective on an advanced missile defense system. From now on, the concept was based on the protection of exclusively strategic objects of military infrastructure from the threat of a disarming surprise attack. The revised Sentinel program was named Safeguard, a precautionary measure, to reflect its purpose.
It was assumed that the presence of missile defense systems to protect strategic objects would make it impossible for the enemy to destroy these objects with a disarming strike of a small number of warheads (for example, a surprise strike from a submarine that came close to the US coast). The enemy will not be able to prepare a massive strike unnoticed: its preparation will inevitably attract the attention of intelligence and alert the United States. Thus, without upsetting the strategic balance as such (since the population centers of the United States were open to enemy retaliatory strikes), the system guaranteed the survival of the American nuclear arsenal in the event of a sudden enemy disarming strike.
Strategic command centers, ballistic missile basing areas, strategic aviation airfields, and missile-carrying submarine bases were now considered as the main covered objects. The task of the system was not to resist massive missile strikes, but to make it impossible to hit these targets with a small number of missiles - which the enemy could quietly deploy near US territory.
The original deployment plan, adopted in 1968, called for the deployment of missile bases to provide protection for the following first-stage facilities:
- Whiteman AFB, Missouri, where 150 Minuteman ICBMs were based
- Malmstrom AFB, Montana, where 150 Minuteman ICBMs were based
- Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota, where 150 Minuteman ICBMs were based
Thus, the Safeguard system protected 450 ICBMs from a disarming strike, which should have been enough to guarantee mutual destruction in the event of any aggression. In the future, the possibility of deploying anti-missile bases and to cover other strategic objects was considered. However, at an early stage of preparation, Whitman base was dropped from the plan (although a location for the deployment of radars and missiles had already been selected) and construction focused on only the other two bases.
The first phase also considered the deployment of a missile base to protect Washington and (to a limited extent) neighboring population centers. [3] In the future, the number of anti-missile bases was expected to be increased to twelve.
In 1972, the United States and the USSR signed the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, which limited the creation of strategic missile defense systems.
The main purpose of the treaty was to ensure the maintenance of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, and thus to reduce international tension and the risk of an atomic war. By pledging not to deploy global missile defense systems (however, the treaty did not prohibit the development and testing of such), both sides ensured a situation in which a surprise attack by one side would always be parried by an enemy nuclear retaliatory strike. Thus, the awareness of their own defenselessness should have deterred both sides from the idea of starting a new world war.
The treaty, however, took into account the fears of strategists about the likelihood of a limited disarming strike. Therefore, according to the treaty, each side could deploy no more than one strategic missile defense area to protect its most important strategic facilities. Each area was supposed to include no more than 100 interceptor missiles with a range of no more than 1000 km. It was assumed that this would be enough to exclude the threat of a disarming strike, while at the same time not upsetting the strategic balance.
Due to the treaty, work on the anti-missile defense of the Malmstrom base was stopped, although the main engineering work had already been completed. The US Army Command considered it more important to complete the construction of an anti-missile base in North Dakota, which the United States had chosen as an authorized missile defense area.
In 1975, Stanley Mickelsen Missile Defense Base in North Dakota was put on alert. The base was located on the territory of the Grand Forks airbase, covering all squadrons of ballistic missiles with their anti-missiles.
The central position of the complex included:
- early warning radar
- missile position radar
- 30 spartan anti-missile silos located in six rows of five silos
- 16 located in four rows of four anti-missile silos "Sprint" (intended for the defense of the complex itself)
Around the main complex, covering the spaced apart positions of ballistic missiles, were located four Remote Missile Sites of Sprint missiles: positions 1 and 2 each had 12 launchers, position 3 had 16 launchers, and position number 4 - 14 launchers. In total, up to 54 Sprint missiles had external positions
Such an architecture of the base made it possible to intercept up to 30 warheads at the transatmospheric defense line, and up to 12 when attacking each separate section of the complex at the atmospheric one. From its position at Grand Forks, the Safeguard complex provided partial missile defense for all of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, most of Wisconsin, and eastern Montana.
The Safegurad system was put on alert in 1975: but the very next day, Congress decided to terminate work on the project. This was due to a change in the doctrine of ensuring the security of strategic missile forces - the beginning of the rearmament of American missile submarines with UGM-73 Poseidon missiles with MIRVs. The construction of the pyramid cost taxpayers a whopping $ 5.7 billion, and in February 1976, after a year and three months of active work, it was simply decommissioned.
All weapons were taken from the pyramid to El Paso. The interior was filled with concrete, leaving only an empty shell as a monument to the arms race. For forty years, the pyramid was filled with groundwater, because its drainage pumps were turned off. Today, the US government is unsuccessfully trying to sell the buildings at auction, but so far there are very few people who want to settle in the former military base.
Dispersed in the world's oceans, the submarine missile carriers were virtually invulnerable to disarming strikes. The American navy had forty-one missile-carrying submarines, each with sixteen missile silos, which, provided they were re-equipped with Poseidon missiles, made it possible to base a total of 6560 warheads on submarines. The significant range of the Poseidons - more than 4600 km - allowed them to avoid areas of dense enemy ASW, launching ballistic missiles from a safe distance. In the future, the appearance of the Trident submarine ballistic missile was expected, possessing an intercontinental range and capable of reaching a target on the territory of the USSR from anywhere in the world ocean.
In light of such prospect of an undersea dispersal of the US nuclear arsenal, the protection against a disarming attack provided by the Safeguard system to just one airbase seemed too expensive. Submarine missile carriers were cheaper, more efficient and more versatile than stationary systems. In 1976, five months after being put on duty, the North Dakota facility was mothballed.
Currently, the only operational part of the complex is the Perimeter Detection Radar used in the US early warning system.
Unlike most missile defense systems, the Safeguard system was effective enough to fulfill its role. This was due to the fact that the objects protected by it - ballistic missile silos - were dispersed over the area, and well protected from defeat.
Rocket Squadron Grand Forks included three squadrons of ballistic missiles, each of which had five missile regiments, with ten silo-based Minuteman ICBMs each - a total of 15 missile regiments and 150 silo launchers (silos OS). To completely incapacitate the squadron with a sudden disarming attack, the enemy needed at least 15 warheads, just to cover one missile regiment. This was within the framework of the possible - for example, a salvo of one submarine of Project 667BD consisted of sixteen missiles with nuclear warheads.
However, the Safeguard system interfered with the attacker's calculations. In theory, the system could neutralize ~ 50 enemy warheads targeting any silo launcher or command post. Even if single warheads were to seep through the defenses, there was no guarantee that they would be sufficient to destroy ALL of the Grand Forks Missile Squadron silos.
Since sequential attacks spaced apart in time (aimed at depleting the defense) in a disarming strike were impossible - the purpose of a disarming strike would have been to hit strategic US targets in the shortest time before the Americans retaliated - the enemy would have had to send more than 50 warheads to EACH missile regiment to have a chance to overcome the Safeguard system and destroy the entire Grand Forks missile squadron. It would be unrealistic to organize forces for such a disarming attack unnoticed.