History
Kotzebue AFS was a continental defence radar station constructed to provide the United States Air Force early warning of an attack by the Soviet Union on Alaska.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
Construction of the station, began in 1957 and was completed in April 1958. The Army Transportation Corps undertook the project. The station site was located on the Kotzebue Sound of Western Alaska, and equipment and construction material was floated by LST or a barge to a dock built on the coast 66°50′18″N162°35′52″W / 66.83833°N 162.59778°W / 66.83833; -162.59778 (Kotzebue Port Facility) . Initially, there were no roads, which had to be built as part of the construction effort. Each item had to be hauled up from the port area along the newly constructed road to the permanent station site.
The station consisted of a power/heating plant, water and fuel storage tanks, gymnasium and other support office buildings. Two other buildings contained living quarters, work areas, and recreational facilities plus opportunities for such sports as skiing, skating, horseshoes, and basketball. The station buildings were, except for the civil engineering building connected by heated hallways. As a result, personnel stationed there, with only very few exceptions, were able to wear "summer" uniforms year round, unless they had a need to go outside during the winter season. The coverings of the station's three radar towers were heated from within to keep the covering from becoming brittle from extreme cold, and thus subject to being damaged or destroyed by high winds. Tours at the station were limited to one year because of the psychological strain and physical hardships. A 5-mile road connected the station to Kotzebue, where a civil airport was located and a town, one of Alaska's major tourist attractions.
The 748th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, activated in April 1958 operated AN/FPS-8, AN/FPS-4, AN/FPS-6, AN/FPS-20, and AN/FPS-87A Kotzebue AFS operated as a Ground-Control Intercept (GCI) and warning station. As a GCI station, the squadron's role was to guide interceptor aircraft deployed to the forward operating base at Galena AFB toward unidentified intruders picked up on the unit's radar scopes. In March 1953, the Manual Air Defense Direction Center (MCC) at Murphy Dome AFS near Fairbanks exercised control over Kotzebue's radars where the data was analyzed to determine range, direction altitude speed and whether or not aircraft were friendly or hostile.
Communications were initially provided by a high frequency radio system which proved unreliable because of atmospheric disturbances. The Alaskan Air Command, after investigating various options, decided to build the White Alice Communications System, a system of Air Force-owned tropospheric scatter and microwave radio relay sites operated by the Air Force Communications Service (AFCS). The Kotzebue site 66°50′17″N162°33′24″W / 66.83806°N 162.55667°W / 66.83806; -162.55667 (Kotzebue White Alice) was activated in 1958. It was inactivated in 1979, and replaced by an Alascom owned and operated satellite earth terminal as part of an Air Force plan to divest itself of the obsolete White Alice Communications System and transfer the responsibility to a commercial firm.
The White Alice Communications System was a United States Air Force telecommunication network with 80 radio stations constructed in Alaska during the Cold War. It used tropospheric scatter for over-the-horizon links and microwave relay for shorter line-of-sight links. Sites were characterized by large parabolic, tropospheric scatter antennas as well as smaller microwave dishes for point to point links.
Over the years, the equipment at the station was upgraded or modified to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the information gathered by the radars. In 1983, Kotzebue received a new AN/FPS-117 minimally attended radar under Alaskan Air Command's SEEK IGLOO program. It was designed to transmit aircraft tracking data via satellite to the Alaskan NORAD Regional Operations Control Center (ROCC) at Elmendorf AFB.
No longer needed, the 748th ACWS was inactivated on l November 1983 and the station re-designated as a Long Range Radar (LRR) Site. In 1990, jurisdiction of the Kotzebue LRR Site was transferred to Eleventh Air Force with the re-designation of AAC.
In 1998 Pacific Air Forces initiated "Operation Clean Sweep", in which abandoned Cold War stations in Alaska were remediated and the land restored to its previous state. After years of neglect the facilities at the station had lost any value they had when the site was closed. The site remediation was carried out by the 611th Civil Engineering Squadron at Elmendorf AFB, and remediation work was completed by 2005.
Alaskan Air Command (AAC) is an inactive United States Air Force Major Command originally established in 1942 under the United States Army Air Forces. Its mission was to organize and administer the air defense system of Alaska, exercise direct control of all active measures, and coordinate all passive means of air defense. In addition, the command also supported Strategic Air Command elements operating through and around Alaska. It was redesignated Eleventh Air Force on 9 August 1990 and, concurrently, status changed from a major command of the United States Air Force to a subordinate organization of Pacific Air Forces.
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