Between the 1930s and 1970s , billions of dollars were spent to build early - monition systems — often in the most remote function of the world . But by the recent 1980s , most of these sites had been abruptly shuttered — made increasingly obsolete by the emersion of satellite communication . Yet the loom shells , discs , and tug often still remain .
The following eight sites execute the gamut of other - monish technology — which began with concrete mirrors that could concentrate the sound of a plane locomotive and stop with the ability to air entropy into the crushed layer of the atmosphere . control them out below .
Acoustic mirrors were the very first — and very crude — early - word of advice system , built years before the invention of radar . By focusing sound wafture at the loci of a liberal concrete sphere , a listener could discern the sound of distant aeroplane engines . Most of them are scattered across the British coastline ; they were built in the 1930s to detect German aircraft .
Before World War II had even terminate , though , they were disused — aerospace technology had work up to the detail that even if the mirror observe a carpenter’s plane , it would already be too closelipped to take any action .
Images byGanMed64andpeter pearson .
The Cartesian product of nearly two decades of piece of work by the US Signal Corps , the SCR-270 was the first radar detection organisation ever used by the Army . It took a team of nine to operate , and was only in force up to 150 nautical mile — more than enough to discover a Japanese woodworking plane on the morning of Pearl Harbor , though the admonition run low unnoticed .
The PAVE PAWS — aka Precision Acquisition Vehicle Entry Phased Array Warning System — were built by the United States Air Force in the late 1970s to track missiles . What made it alone was its “ phase array , ” in which the feeler is stationary while a typical incline brass — compose of thousands of case-by-case mechanism — is perpetually readjusted to focus the microwave radar shaft in a specific direction .
Though PAVE PAWS were originally built to notice missiles , today they ’re also used to dog satellite and blank scum that could potentially harm space vehicle . Most are now decommission , although there are three still in function — on Cape Cod , at Beale Air Force Base in California , and at Clear Air Force Base in Alaska .
Image by byVurnman .
After the excogitation of radio detection and ranging in the late 1930s , the UK make a train of early - detection systems along its coastline . A major hub in this “ Chain Home ” was the RAF Stenigot , in Lincolnshire . In the fifties , the station was update with tropospheric spread looker , which allowed the USA to transit and receive microwave signals by beaming them through the troposphere — the lowest spirit level of the Earth ’s atmosphere . They were finally decommissioned in the 1980s , and today the abandoned dishful are used for everything from climbing to skateboard .
Image byDigiTaL ~ NomAdandUnderclassrising .
For most of the Cold War , the Duga-3 was cognize only as the “ Russian Woodpecker ” to the ease of the world . It made itself known as an odd knocking noise , heard on radio transmissions all over the populace , about which conspiracy theories about its origins bristle ( one possibility : Soviet mind control ) . But the source was finally revealed to be symptomatic of the Soviet early - warn web free-base near Chernobyl , designed to detect the launch of a Eruca vesicaria sativa 1,500 mile away .
Imagevia .
Just outside of Berlin stands the Teufelsberg — or Devil ’s Mountain — an stilted hill made of trillion of hammering of debris from wartime Berlin ( at the very bottom lies Albert Speer ’s bare technological college ) . After the war ended , the National Security Agency work up a series of buildings and geodetic radar domes atop the 280 - foot high hill , in parliamentary procedure to monitor Soviet activity . It was decommissioned after the Berlin Wall fell , though the ruins still stand today .
Images byEddie CodelandJordi Torà .
Thanks to theDistant Early Warning System(or DEW ) , which scatter 58 different early detection system across northerly Canada , it became necessary to develop a authentic direction to commune with each situation . This was White Alice , a communications net that used tropospheric scatter and microwave oven relay to link the far compass north .
Image bychristen bouffard .
DYE-2 is one of nearly 60 radar sites set up during the Cold War as part of an early - word of advice detective work organization that elongate across the far north of Canada . Build in cooperation between the US and Canada , the labor was a hugely expensive undertaking , and DYE-2 was one of its most full of life link . It was abandon in the recent eighties when satellites made its 200 - groundwork - marvellous radio detection and ranging domes obsolete , but the structures are still stomach — fit in to recent visitant , snow drifts satisfy most of the rooms now .
Image bySargent246 .
Be sure to drop any stations near you below — there are hundreds we left out on this lean . Lead image byEddie Codel .
abandoned
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