Genesis
Experimentation with the detection of missiles by a modified SCR-270 radar in 1948 and 1949 at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico along with U.S. experience in the use of high-power components on other radars, created a basis for believing that a megawatt-rated radar could be fabricated for operation over much longer ranges than ever before. The need for intelligence on Soviet missile activity being acute, a formal requirement for such a radar was established, and Rome Air Development Center was given responsibility for engineering the system.
In October 1954 General Electric, which had experience in producing high-power VHF equipment and radars, was awarded a contract for the fabrication, installation, and testing of what was to be at the time the world's largest and most powerful operational radar. The contract stipulated that the equipment was to be in operation at Site IX near Diyarbakir within nine months: by 1 June 1955. Construction began in February, and the scheduled operational date was missed by fifteen minutes.
The original antenna installation was a large D.S. Kennedy parabolic reflector, 175 feet (53 m) high by 110 feet (34 m) wide, radiating in the frequency range 175 to 215 megahertz. Standard GE high-power television transmitters, modified for pulse operation, were used initially.
Surveillance was carried out by six horizontal beams over the Kapustin Yar area. In 1958 a second antenna, 150 feet (46 m) high by 300 feet (90 m) long, and new 12-megawatt transmitters were installed as part of a modification kit which provided three additional horizontal beams, a seven-beam vertical fan, and greater range capability.
The elaborated system includes automatic alarm circuitry, range-finding circuitry, and data-processing equipment; it is equipped to make 35 mm photographic recordings of all signals received. A preliminary reduction of data was accomplished on-site, but the final processing was done in the Foreign Technology Division at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
From 15 June 1955, when the first Soviet missile was detected, to 1 March 1964, 508 incidents (sightings) were reported, 147 of them during the last two years of the period.
Read more about this topic: AN/FPS-17
Famous quotes containing the word genesis:
“Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”
—Bible: Hebrew Genesis 1:29.
But in a later context, God told the disgraced Adam, “and thou shalt eat the herb of the field” (Genesis 3:18)
“Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)