Attack of the Moon
Surely one of the strangest incidents of the early Cold War occurred in 1960. On October fifth, The North American Aerospace Defense Command, (NORAD), which tracks everything that flies around near U.S. airspace, received word from a early-warning radar station in Thule, Greenland. It indicated that a massive Soviet Union missile attack, directed towards the United States, was without a doubt, well underway. The U.S. was just building a series of new radar stations, called the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, (BMEWS). The network was composed of 12 radar sites which started construction in 1958. Since the shortest route to the U.S. from the Soviet Union was over the north pole, the radar stations were built in Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Early versions of these stations, called the Distant Early Warning line (DEW line), could only track bombers, but with the dangerous rise of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the sites had to be upgraded.
Nuclear ballistic missiles were, of course, much faster then bombers, so in case of an attack, every minute counted. And with only a 15 to 25 minute warning window of nuclear attack, everyone involved was understandingly concerned. Testing on the new BMEWS radar at Thule began in May of 1960 and the Initial Operational Capability (IOC) was at the end of September and then operational in October. They didn’t have long to wait before something happened. There are several versions of what occurred next after the initial radar warning occurred, some say the the situation was calmly handled and checks of the system were quickly made. Others say that there was a little bit more apprehension and panic at the thought that nuclear missiles were on their way. Fortunately for us, what the Thule radar was actually seeing, was the moon, our moon, rising over the horizon from the direction of the Soviet Union. In retrospect it was nice to know that our radar was very powerful and effective, and could see the distant moon. Very soon after, changes were made in the radar to disregard the moon in the future. When the system was designed, no one had anticipated this possibility until the radar started operation and was actually being used.
Nothing lasts forever and the Thule BMEWS radar system was deactivated in June, 1987. It was replaced by a Phased Array Radar, whatever that is. And while the whole incident, seen from our current day, appears amusing, what is not so funny is that missile warning systems in Russia are old and prone to fault. With Russian President Putin getting more aggressive, it does not give anyone much confidence in the fact that their old nuclear systems may be less then reliable. The Chinese do not even have a warning system and when they get around to building one, they will have bugs and other things to work out before it becomes entirely operational. Perhaps we should tell them about that little problem with the moon and radar.
(Thule’s system of BMEWS radar towers prior to being taken down in 2014, with the Danish government’s approval.)
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