ACROSS the North American continent from the edge of the polar icecap to the Mexican border lies a vast and wondrously intricate system of aerial defenses. Built over a period of nine years at a cost of more than $18 billion, based upon radar networks within networks electronically tied to the most modern systems of detection and interception (see color pages), it was never considered foolproof against penetration. A defense in depth, it was designed to—and will—limit to a minimum the breakthroughs of Soviet long-range bombers coming to pour nuclear destruction on the U.S.
Now a whole new problem confronts the system. The cold fact: it cannot detect missiles. Warns Air Force General Earle E. Partridge, Commander in Chief of NORAD (North American Air Defense): "If the aggressor's weapon is the ICBM, the continent stands today almost as naked as it did in 1946, for I have no radar to detect missiles and no defense against them."
What should the U.S. do about it?
First, for an unpredictable number of years, perhaps for a decade, before Soviet missiles supplant manned bombers, the NORAD system must be maintained.
Second, NORAD must be modernized as speedily as possible with new, long-range anti-missile radar and interception devices.
The system that guards the North American continent today and is a hope for protection in the future includes: ¶ The 9,000-mile fence of the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line and its extensions, composed of air, sea and ground radar elements, circling the far approaches of the continent. ¶ A second warning system (the Mid-Canada line) of automatic and semiautomatic radar stations running across the wilderness of Central Canada. ¶ An intricate "interior zone" warning and control complex of offshore air and sea picket lines, continent-wide networks of radar stations, identification and interception centers, ground and air combat commands, from Labrador and British Columbia to Florida and Southern California.
Nerve center of the system is Ent Air Force Base (named for the late Major General Uzal G. Ent) in Colorado Springs, where some 700 Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corp officers and 1,500 enlisted men, along with about 40 Canadians, work in a precisely knit NORAD command under General Partridge and his Canadian deputy, Air Marshal C. (for Charles) Roy Slemon. In a two-story, windowless operations center at Ent, a ganglion of more than 600 miles of electronic communications wire feeds information to markers of huge Plexiglas plotting boards, which show the air situation over every part of the continent at any given moment. Watching the plotting boards from tiers of observation desks, General Partridge and his battle staff can evaluate the information and carry out NORAD's two major functions:
1) Supply the Strategic Air Command's bombers with the earliest possible warning that the enemy has launched an attack (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Armed Forces).
2) Provide regional defense commanders with information necessary to intercept and destroy attackers.