Distant Early Warning Line

thumb|A rough map of the three warning lines. From north to south: the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, [[Mid-Canada Line, and Pinetree Line.]]

The Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the north coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska (see Project Stretchout and Project Bluegrass), in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland (DYE Stations). It was set up to detect incoming bombers of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and provide early warning of any sea-and-land invasion.

The DEW Line was the northernmost and most capable of three radar lines in Canada and Alaska. The first of these was the joint Canadian-United States Pinetree Line, which ran from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island just north of the Canada–United States border, but even while it was being built there were concerns that it would not provide enough warning time to launch an effective counterattack. The Mid-Canada Line (MCL) was proposed as an inexpensive solution using bistatic radar. This provided a "trip wire" warning located roughly at the 55th parallel, giving commanders ample warning time, but little information on the targets or their exact location. The MCL proved largely useless in practice, as the radar return of flocks of birds overwhelmed signals from aircraft.

The DEW Line was proposed as a solution to both of these problems, using conventional radar systems that could both detect and characterise an attack, while being located far to the north where they would offer hours of advance warning. This would not only provide ample time for the defences to prepare, but also allow the Strategic Air Command to get its active aircraft airborne long before Soviet bombers could reach their targets. The need was considered critical and the construction was given the highest national priorities. Advance site preparation began in December 1954, and the construction was carried out in a massive logistical operation that took place mostly during the summer months when the sites could be reached by ships. The 63-base line reached operational status in 1957. The MCL was shut down in the early 1960s, and much of the Pinetree Line was given over to civilian use.

In 1985, as part of the "Shamrock Summit", the United States and Canada agreed to transition DEW to the new North Warning System (NWS). Beginning in 1988, most of the original DEW stations were deactivated, while a small number were upgraded with all-new equipment. The official handover from DEW to NWS took place on 15 July 1993.

Introduction

The shortest, or great circle, route for a Soviet air attack on North America was through the Arctic, across the area around the North Pole. The DEW Line was built during the Cold War to give early warning of a Soviet nuclear strike, to allow time for United States bombers to get off the ground and land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) to be launched, to reduce the chances that a preemptive strike could destroy the United States' strategic nuclear forces. The original DEW line was designed to detect bombers and was unable to detect ICBMs. To give warning of this threat, in 1958 a more sophisticated radar system was constructed, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS).

The DEW Line was a significant achievement among Cold War initiatives in the Arctic. A successful combination of scientific design and logistical planning of the late 1950s, the DEW Line consisted of a string of continental defence radar installations, ultimately stretching from Alaska to Greenland. In addition to the secondary Mid-Canada Line and the tertiary Pinetree Line, the DEW Line marked the edge of an electronic grid controlled by the new Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) computer system and was ultimately centred at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colorado, command hub of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

The construction of the DEW Line was made possible by a bilateral agreement between the Canadian and United States governments, and by collaboration between the United States Department of Defense and the Bell System of communication companies. The DEW Line grew out of a detailed study made by a group of the nation's foremost scientists in 1952, the Summer Study Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The subject of the study was the vulnerability of the United States and Canada to aerial bombing attacks, and its concluding recommendation was that a distant early warning line of search radar stations be built across the Arctic region of the North American continent as rapidly as possible.

Development and construction

thumb|Map of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line

Improvements in Soviet technology rendered the Pinetree Line and Mid-Canada Line inadequate to provide enough early warning and on 15 February 1954, the Canadian and United States governments agreed to jointly build a third line of radar stations (Distant Early Warning), this time running across the high Arctic. The line would run roughly along the 69th parallel north, about north of the Arctic Circle.

Before this project was completed, men and women with the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience were drawn from Bell Telephone companies in every state in the United States, and many Canadian provinces. Much of the responsibility was delegated under close supervision to a vast number of subcontractors, suppliers, and United States military units.

The initial contract with the United States Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force provided for the design and construction of a small experimental system to determine at the beginning whether the idea was practicable. The designs of communication and radar detection equipment available at the time were known to be unsuited to the weather and atmospheric conditions to be encountered in the Arctic.

Early efforts were aided when, by happenstance, the US Navy terminated its oil exploration activities in Alaska. The associated infrastructure that had been established in the arctic was quickly repurposed to serve early development of the DEW line. Material converted from Navy use included 1,200 tons of supplies, with many Caterpillar D8 tractors, heavy duty cranes, diesel generators, and radio equipment. Most fortunately, the surplus included sixty equipped wannigans - enough to permit setup of field camps at all construction sites. (A "wannigan" is a building on sleds, about 12 x 20 feet in size. These were completely equipped for camp operations and were of various types - Cook, Mess, Bunk, Power Plant, Water, Shop, Storage, Utility, Steam Point, etc.)

Prototypes of several stations were designed and built in Alaska in 1953. A prototype built for training purposes was chosen to be located in Streator, Illinois in 1952. The Streator DEW-Line Training Center became operational in 1956 and closed when operations were moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1975. While few of the original designs for either buildings or equipment were retained, the trial installations did prove that the DEW Line was feasible, and they furnished a background of information that led to the final improved designs of all facilities and final plans for manpower, transportation, and supply. Siting crews covered the area – first from the air and then on the ground – to locate by scientific means the best sites for the main, auxiliary, and intermediate stations. These crews lived and worked under primitive conditions. They covered vast distances by airplanes, snowmobiles, and dog sleds, working in blinding snowstorms with temperatures so low that ordinary thermometers could not measure them. They completed their part of the job on schedule and set the stage for the crews and machines that followed. The line consisted of 63 stations stretching from Alaska to Baffin Island, covering nearly . The United States agreed to pay for and construct the line, and to employ Canadian labour as much as possible. Later, military and civilian airlifts, huge sealifts during the short summers, barges contributed to the distribution of vast cargoes along the length of the Line to build the permanent settlements needed at each site. Much of the job of carrying mountains of supplies to the northern sites fell to military and naval units. More than 3,000 United States Army Transportation Corps soldiers were given special training to prepare them for the job of unloading ships in the Arctic. They went with the convoys of United States Navy ships and they raced time during the few weeks the ice was open to land supplies at dozens of spots on the shores of the Arctic Ocean during the summers of 1955, 1956, and 1957.

thumb|The LeTourneau snow train in Alaska

Scores of military and commercial pilots, flying everything from small bush planes to four-engined turboprops, were the backbone of the operation. The Lockheed LC-130, a ski-equipped version of the C-130 Hercules, owned by the United States Air Force and operated by the 139th Airlift Squadron, provided a significant amount of airlift to sites that were out on ice caps such as DYE-3 in Greenland. Transport planes such as the C-124 Globemaster and the C-119 Flying Boxcar also supported the project. Together, these provided the only means of access to many of the stations during the wintertime. In all, of materials were moved from the United States and southern Canada to the Arctic by air, land, and sea.

:Operating characteristics of the AN/TPS-1D (Mod c) search radar

Frequency range 1.22 to 1.35 GHz
Peak power output 160 kilowatts

Average power output 400 watts

Pulse rate 400 pulses per second
Pulse width 6.0 microsecond
Range to
Antenna radiation pattern
Horizontal 2.8-degree
Vertical 30 deg cosecant<sup>2</sup> (elevation angle)
Receiver noise figure 11.7 dB
IF bandwidth and frequency 5.0 MHz and 60 MHz
Required prime power 8.5 kW
Weight of radar about
Total volume of radar electronics about

Modifications to each operating radar station occurred during the construction phase of the DEW Line system. This was due to the extreme winds, frigid temperatures, and the ground conditions due to permafrost and ice. There were two significant electronic modifications that were also crucial to the functioning of these radar stations in an Arctic environment. One reduced the effects of vibration in correlation to temperature change, the other increased the pulse duration from two to six microseconds. It also began using a crystal oscillator for more stable readings and accurate accounts of movement within the air.

Operations

thumb|A DYE station in western Greenland is visible in the distance beyond the snow-drifted equipment [[pallets in the foreground of this photograph.]]

There were three types of stations: small unstaffed "gap filler stations" that were checked by ground crews only every few months during the summer; intermediate stations with only a station chief, a cook, and a mechanic; and larger stations that had a variable number of employees and may have had libraries, forms of entertainment, and other accommodations. The stations used a number of long-range L band – emitting systems known as the AN/FPS-19. The "gaps" between the stations were watched by the directional AN/FPS-23 doppler radar systems, similar to those pioneered only a few years earlier on the Mid-Canada Line. The stations were interconnected by White Alice, a series of radio communications systems that used tropospheric scatter technology. If an unknown flight was detected, the DEW Line station would contact AMIS to see if a flight plan might have been missed; if not, NORAD was notified. Military flights, including B-52 bombers, frequently operated in the polar regions and used identification friend or foe (IFF) systems to authenticate the flight. This shift into a more military role began with a transition of authority, shifting responsibility of Arctic defence in Canada from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to the Canadian Armed Forces. This "active defence" had three key elements: minimizing the extent of the American presence in the Canadian Arctic, Canadian government input into the management of the DEW Line, and full Canadian participation in Arctic defence.

Funding problems for the DEW Line also played a role in perception of the project. American investment in building and operating the DEW Line system declined as the ICBM threat refocused priorities, but Canada did not fill the void with commensurate additional funding. In 1968 a Canadian Department of National Defence Paper (27 November 1968) stated no further funding for research on the DEW Line or air space would be allocated due in part to lack of commercial activity The Canadian Government also limited United States air activity, base activity, soldier numbers, and contractor numbers; and the overall operation would be considered and called in all formalities a "joint operation".

Cultural impact

The cultural impact of the DEW Line System is immense in Canada and Alaska. In Canada, the DEW line increased connections between the populous south and the remote High Arctic, helping to bring Inuit more thoroughly into the Canadian polity. The construction and operating of the DEW Line provided some economic development for the Arctic region. This provided momentum for further development through research, new communications, and new studies of the area. Although the construction of the DEW line itself was placed in American hands, much of the later development was under direct Canadian direction.

Outside of Canada, the American government's satisfaction with DEW and similar telemetry stations inspired them to—in 1965—attempt to build a remote sensing station atop the Himalayas to spy on China's nuclear weapons program. During the resulting Nanda Devi plutonium mission, the CIA lost plutonium fuel for a radioisotope thermoelectric generator somewhere on Nanda Devi. The mountain feeds the headwaters of the Ganges, which supports hundred of millions of lives. Efforts to recover it have failed. An effort in 1973 succeeded, after which the sateillite technology rendered the station obsolete.

The DEW Line has appeared in popular media. It is a setting for the film The Deadly Mantis, released in 1957, the year the Line was completed. The film begins with a short documentary on the three RADAR lines, focusing on the DEW Line's construction. The progressive rock band Rush received considerable AOR airplay in 1984 with their song "Distant Early Warning", based on a Toronto newspaper article expressing concerns about risk of nuclear war.

Deactivation and clean-up

In 1996, the United States Government entered into an agreement with the Government of Canada on the environmental remediation of the DEW Line Sites in Canada, alongside the remediation of the Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline, Naval Station Argentia in Newfoundland, and U.S. installations at CFB Goose Bay in Labrador. While asserting it had no legal obligation to reimburse Canada for the costs of remediation, the U.S. agreed to deposit US$100 million () into Canada's Foreign Military Sales Trust Account as compensation for the costs of cleanup of the four projects.

The cleanup is underway, site by site. In assessing the cleanup, new research suggests that off-road vehicles damaged vegetation and organic matter, resulting in the melting of the permafrost, a key component to the hydrological systems of the areas. The DEW Line has also been linked to depleted fish stocks and carelessness in agitating local animals such as the caribou, as well as non-seasonal hunting. These aspects are claimed to have had a devastating impact on the local native subsistence economies and environment.

thumb|An Atlantic barrier [[EC-121 Warning Star|WV-2 and the radar picket destroyer escort USS Sellstrom (DER-255) off Newfoundland in 1957]]

The Atlantic Barrier (BarLant) consisted of two rotating squadrons, one based at Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland, to fly orbits to the Lajes Field in the Azores and back; and the other at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. BarLant began operations on 1 July 1956, and flew continuous coverage until early 1965, when the barrier was shifted to cover the approaches between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom (GIUK barrier). Aircraft from Argentia were staged through Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland, to extend coverage times.

The Pacific Barrier (BarPac) began operations with one squadron operating from Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii, and a forward refuelling base at Naval Air Facility Midway Island, on 1 July 1958. Planes flew from Midway Island to Naval Air Facility Adak on Adak Island (in the Aleutian Island chain) and back, non-stop. Its orbits overlapped the radar picket stations of the ships of Escort Squadron Seven (CORTRON SEVEN), from roughly Kodiak Island to the Midway Atoll and Escort Squadron Five (CORTRON FIVE), from Pearl Harbor to northern Pacific waters. Normally four or five WV-2s were required at any single time to provide coverage over the entire line. This coverage was later augmented, and modified/replaced by Project Stretchout and Project Bluegrass).

The Guardian-class radar picket ships were based in Rhode Island and San Francisco, and covered picket stations off each coast.

Barrier Force operations were discontinued by September 1965 and their EC-121K (WV-2 before 1962) aircraft placed in storage.

References

External links

DEW Line Story video
BAR-1 DEW Line Archive (A comprehensive photo and blueprint archive)
Big Picture: DEW Line video
Dew (Distant Early Warning) Line And Other Military Project: Bell System Memorial