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Naval air defense
op-ed piece plus letter to the editor:
The Washington Times June 21, 2004, Monday, Final Edition OPED; Pg. A19 HEADLINE: Rebuilding air defenses; September 11 and the 'peace dividend' BYLINE: By Darl Stephenson, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040...5246-4578r.htm BODY: In the movie "Independence Day," the aliens finally were defeated by a worldwide, coordinated air attack directed from an air-defense command center at "Area 51." The events of September 11 provided a sobering look at the reality of the air-defense situation in the United States and the woeful extent to which an already weak system had been cut back in the wake of the Cold War. I am a former senior director at the Northeast Air Defense Sector, which controlled the fighter aircraft on September 11. From the final hearings of the September 11 commission, I take real pride in the actions of the air-defense crew on duty that day. The mission commander, in particular, should have received praise for the actions he took, such as his decision to put fighters over New York City and to order jets to fly at supersonic speed and "not worry about how many windows we break," violating long-standing peacetime rules about going supersonic over populated areas. The public needs to understand that the U.S. air-defense system at that time was a shell of the massive continental system that existed in the late 1960s to combat the Soviet bomber air threat. Any bomber attack on the United States would have been beaten back with catastrophic losses because of the robust air-defense system in place at that time. It consisted of fighters such as the F-102 [flown by President George W. Bush], the F-101 and F-106, and Army air-defense missiles such as the Nike Hercules - all commanded by a massive computerized air-defense system called the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE. SAGE was truly the first Internet - able to pass commands to air bases and army missile sites and to fly the fighter aircraft from the ground via data-link. In the late 1960s, the Johnson-McNamara defense establishment decided that the intercontinental missile threat was paramount and that air defense against bombers was largely irrelevant. While true to an extent, the Johnson administration also was looking for money to fight the war in Vietnam, and the huge and costly continental air-defense system was a tempting target. In 1968, the year I joined the Air Force and was assigned to a SAGE direction center in Oregon, the cutbacks began. My direction center and many others across the country were closed. The entire Backup Intercept Center system was shut down. All Army air-defense missile batteries surrounding American cities were closed. The only Army batteries remaining were in Alaska. Even at its height, the Navy was never a player in continental air defense except on paper. The old SAGE system, based on vacuum-tube technology, soldiered on until the early 1980s. In the 1970s, a replacement system was designed that provided few of the war-fighting capabilities of the SAGE system. It was aptly called the Joint Surveillance System, indicating that the role of air defense would be largely to monitor air sovereignty and not be a primary air-combat system. Air-defense fighters were kept on alert, but most other capabilities of the system, such as radars that could combat severe jamming, were not made available. Data-link control reverted back to voice control of the interceptors. When the Reagan administration came into office, an attempt was made to put some war-fighting capability back into the system. Plans called for linking tactical air-control radars to the continental air-defense system. New interceptors, such as the F-15 and F-16, were added to the system. Canada adopted the F-18 as an air-defense interceptor. For the most part, however, budget priorities elsewhere hindered bringing the air-defense system back up to where it had once been. And then came the end of the Cold War, and the public clamored for a "peace dividend." Air defenses were once more cut back. On September 11, this country received its "peace dividend" when it was attacked catastrophically for the second time from the air. The first was, of course, Pearl Harbor. Since September 11, many changes have been made. Most importantly, we have learned that the threat may come from inside the country. The public has seen the deployment of Army air-defense batteries around certain targets, such as Washington, and these batteries are closely integrated with NORAD. I hope the Navy finally will have been brought into the air-defense picture with its very capable aircraft and missiles. New technologies have been put into place, and the Federal Aviation Administration will now view itself as an integral part of a possible air battle and not just as an air-traffic-control system. The commission hearings proved all too well that the FAA did not provide adequate information to NORAD on September 11 about the situation at hand. Never again can this nation take continental air defense for granted. No matter how rarely it might have to be exercised, air-defense personnel must stand duty around the clock and be given the proper tools to counter any threat. Emerging threats will be cruise missiles that even small powers might be able to obtain and launch from surface ships. This country cannot afford a third disaster from the air. Darl Stephenson is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Before his 1995 retirement, he was stationed at the Northeast Air Defense Sector, which controlled the fighters on September 11. The Washington Times June 24, 2004, Thursday, Final Edition LETTERS; Pg. A20 HEADLINE: Air defense BODY: I must take exception to several items mentioned in the otherwise correct assessment of the state of the nation's air-defense system in the column by Lt. Col. Darl Stephenson ["Rebuilding air defenses," Op-Ed, Monday]. Having served as a radar operator and intercept technician between 1957 and 1963, I find his history of the U.S. Air Force operation of the air-defense system to be accurate. However, his statement that the Navy was never a player in continental air defense is not correct. The Navy operated a key extension to the land-based air-defense radars during the height [as he put it] of the defense system in the form of radar picket ships off both the East and West Coast. My direct experience with these very able [at the time] radar platforms is based on contact with these ships while assigned to two coastal land-based Air Force Global Coastal Infrastructure [GCI] sites. Their "stations" were located approximately every 100 miles, from the southernmost station [70 miles east of Key West, Fla.] to the northernmost station between Labrador and the southern tip of Greenland. The Navy operated an identical setup off of our West Coast. These ships were converted World War II destroyers and destroyer-escorts [DDR/DER], and they would remain on station for 30 days at a stretch. The Navy also pioneered and operated an extensive airborne early-warning [AEW] system [what is now called AWACS, for airborne warning and control system] from the early 1950s through the late 1960s with its well-known Willie Victors, or as they were officially known, WV-2s. While the Air Force operated an identical aircraft, the RC-121, the Navy operated a total of five numbered air wings of the WV-2s while the Air Force operated just two wings. At our Air Force GCI site, the only fighter squadron we had to call on for the role of an all- weather air-defense interceptor was the Navy's outstanding All-Weather Fighter Squadron 3 [VF[AW]-3], whose personnel stood the two-minute alert duty 24 hours a day for the two years I was assigned to the radar site. This was a unique unit, as it was a bit larger in the number of assigned aircraft, the Douglas F-4D-1 Skyray, as the unit stood at the two-minute alert both at Key West as well as San Diego and was assigned directly to the Air Force Air Defense Command [ADC] for continental air defense. In fact, VF[AW]-3 was a multiple winner of the Air Force ADC "A" award, given only to the most outstanding air and ground units assigned to the Air Force air defense force. To my knowledge, it is the only Navy unit to have received the award. In my experience, the Navy was a big player in the nation's air-defense network. It is unfair not to give it credit for the outstanding effort of the thousands of officers and men who served aboard radar picket ships, AEW aircraft and front-line fighter squadrons. MIKE O'ROURKE Oak Hill, Va. The Washington Times June 27, 2004, Sunday, Final Edition LETTERS; Pg. B02 HEADLINE: Navy deserves credit BODY: Mike O'Rourke's correction ["Air defense," Letters, Thursday] of the role of the Navy during the time mentioned is appreciated and my apologies to the Navy for that omission. I was aware of the picket ships, but in my haste to reply to some of the September 11 commission testimony it just went by me. For space reasons I also did not mention the deployment of Hawk Army air-defense missiles in the South Florida area after an embarrassing defection of a Cuban MiG pilot in South Florida that went undetected by air defense radar. For several years this deployment stood alert, but it was also eventually abandoned. I think the thrust of my article is that eventually both the Navy and the Army opted out of continental air defense and it may have become a "stepchild" of other Air Force commands with higher priority missions. Even during the Reagan administration's attempts to put some war-fighting capability back in continental air defense, the Army and Navy never returned to the mission in any meaningful way. The stale operations plans were on paper and never exercised. Even within the Air Force, the tactical control system was nearly incompatible with the NORAD system. For decades the command, control and communications systems of U.S. military systems had real problems communicating with one another because they were developed for separate missions. In recent years this has changed to an extent and after September 11 all of these systems need the capability to link with each other in a timely fashion. Once again, my thanks to Mike O'Rourke and apology to the Navy. DARL STEPHENSON The Washington Times July 1, 2004, Thursday, Final Edition LETTERS; Pg. A18 HEADLINE: Naval contributions To give the Navy its complete due in the historic air defense mission: Its "picket ships" and WV-2 "Willie Vickers" aircraft also were supplemented by the ZPG-2W and ZPG-3 Navy blimps of the Airship Airborne Early Warning Squadron 1[ZW1], flying out of Lakehurst, N.J. The airships normally patrolled the Atlantic Inshore Barrier off the northeastern coast of New Jersey. They were equipped with a search radar in the gas envelope and a height-finding radar on top. They carried a crew of 21 and had an endurance of more than 200 hours. The 2W was about 342 feet long, and the 3W was 404 feet long. The Navy terminated its airship program on Aug. 31, 1962.During the height of the Cold War, these historic Navy assets [picket ships, WV-2 "Willie Vickers" and the airships] sent their radar signals to a coastal radar station and to an Air Defense Sector like the one where Lt. Col. Darl Stephenson ["Rebuilding air defenses," Op-Ed, June 21] worked. ROBERT SPIERS Rome, N.Y. Mike O'Rourke's contribution, "Air defense" [Letters, June 24], needs a supplement. The Navy's seaward extension of the DEW Line included 16 Liberty Ships from the Maritime Administration's reserve fleet. Designated AGR [first YAGR], eight ships stood far off each coast and were called Radron 1 and Radron 2. For details and ships' histories, see http://members.tripod.com/YAGRS/. MIKE MCMORROW Arlington |
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