Eldorado

PAVE PAWS radar near Eldorado, Texas [30 58 42N, 100 33 10W]

PAVE PAWS is a military radar network designed to detect ballistic missiles heading toward the US. Since this would include submarine-launched missiles, the network has to look in directions you might not immediately think of when pondering the likely launch areas for ICBMs. The Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico, for example. To satisfy that requirement, a PAVE PAWS radar site was built in southwest Texas near the town of Eldorado. The triangular shape of the radar allows for two arrays facing southwest and southeast.

As can be seen from the image, weeds growing in the parking lot and no vehicles in sight is a sure sign that this facility is no longer operational (reportedly shut down in the mid-90's).


But perhaps they should have restarted it a few years ago so they could spy on their neighbors to the south. Mexico? No...I'm referring to the Yearning For Zion (YFZ) Ranch less than four miles south-southeast of the radar. This is the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints compound that became famous in recent years because of the raid by law enforcement officers resulting in various prosecutions and court proceedings in nearby San Angelo for polygamy and related offenses. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLDS for details...

In the image at left, the PAVE PAWS radar site is visible at upper left and the YFZ Ranch compound is the maze of roads and buildings at the bottom. On a recent drive down US 277, it was easy to spot the radar, but I did not notice the YFZ compound. It may not be visible from the highway...at the time, I didn't actually know where to look.

Shemya Island

Cobra Dane [52 44 14N, 174 05 30E]

The Cobra Dane Radar is located on Shemya Island, Alaska. It's a phased-array radar approximately 95 ft. in diameter facing northwest toward the Russian missile ranges near Kamchatka. Shemya is both pretty and bleak. My first visit was in July, 1985. It was sunny and 57F when we landed -- I was promptly told that this was one of the half-dozen days of sunshine they would have each year (and I never saw the sun again for the remainder of the week, nor on a subsequent trip in December). It was also one of the warmest (with 63F claimed as the all-time high temperature on the island). I also saw a few bluebonnets and lots of blue foxes. Hard to believe bluebonnets would grow under those conditions, but they did. I had been told about the blue foxes by my grandfather, Julian Bullock, a Navy Seabee who had built the first runway on Shemya during WWII. Turns out that the foxes had become tame over the years from being around people (once the island became a military base during WWII). The first sight I saw as I went down the back stairs of the Reeve Aleutian Airways 727 Combo (freight and passengers) was a blue fox looking up the stairway. During the week, I got a tour of the Cobra Dane Radar facility. They had me sign their guestbook for "official visitors". The most recent visitor (from the prior week) had been William J. Casey.

original runway on Shemya Island...new one at lower right