Nike Missile Sites of the San Francisco Bay Area (2001)

by stevewilhelm • 11 years ago

90 48 11 years ago

justizin2• 11 years ago

They note that one of the sites (Ft Cronkhite) is being used by The Marine Mammal Center, it says that one 'magazine' (silo) is being used for the storage of veterinary drugs, there are also a few decades of biological samples, and the second silo is used in the rare case a Dolphin needs to be rehabilitated.

angersock2• 11 years ago

If you're ever able to hunt down a copy of the project report on Nike/Spartan, do so. They're interesting reading. Those engineers were pretty awesome.

enknamel• 11 years ago

Out in the Marin Headlands they have a whole exhibit about the missile sites there and around the Bay. You can even interview and listen to presentations by people who were stationed around the Bay during the cold war watching for a Soviet attack. Apparently, the Soviets had a plan to repeatedly nuke the bay to generate huge clouds of radiation that would then spread across the country. http://www.nps.gov/goga/nike-missile-site.htm

enahs-sf• 11 years ago

The headlands missile site is just a short and very pleasant bike ride away. Highly recommended.

mikeyouse• 11 years ago

Pleasant!? Up Hawk Hill?! (Mostly joking while nursing some very sore legs after my first ride in a few weeks)

slayed0• 11 years ago

Ha! I do this ride nearly every week and I'm not sure I would describe it as "short and very pleasant" to a general audience. Unless you have a decent road bike and are fairly fit you will likely be walking up hawk hill.

ghaff• 11 years ago

Well worth seeing. As far as I know, it's the only Nike exhibit of its type with a launcher that actually gets raised up. There are various remains of other Nike sites around (including on Angel Island) but there's typically not much there.

Animats• 11 years ago

It's much more than a static exhibit. I've been out to SF-88 and had a tour of the control and radar trailers, with their analog computers and consoles powered up [2], but the radars not emitting. They can run the missile lifts up and down and raise a missile to firing position.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg3sjXUr-yg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssY11Dujaog

thesis• 11 years ago

I've often wondered where our current air defense systems are now. It seems the government must spend a lot of money hiding them in plain sight or I'm not looking hard enough.

rhino3692• 11 years ago

The airforce is testing a cruise missile defense balloon in Maryland. It's a blimp tied to the ground.

I'd imagine most of US civil air defense is just sending up fighter jets.

But on 9-11, US air defense got caught with their pants down. I wouldn't expect much.

smeyer• 11 years ago

I'd imagine most of US civil air defense is just sending up fighter jets.

The US has developed a lot of missiles, including those used to shoot down other missiles. Do you have a reason to believe that their IADS is so dependent on fighters? I'm not particularly well-informed on the issue so I'd be interested to read more.

justizin2• 11 years ago

But on 9-11, US air defense got caught with their pants down. I wouldn't expect much.

I'm not sure it's US air defense who got caught with their pants down, the entire notion of the 9/11 attack would have been to get around the effectiveness of US air defense at keeping foreign aircraft out of US airspace.

The time needed to scramble F-16s is not based on a jet flying from Boston to DC or whatever. That's already the end zone.

AndrewKemendo• 11 years ago

Depends on what level you are talking about.

For ICBMs there are naval vessels like the Aegis, as well as land based systems surrounding the CONUS.

Within CONUS however they are largely relegated to military installations. For example there are batteries on military installations in the D.C. area, but not outside of those reservations.

[1]http://theweek.com/articles/549964/futuristic-air-defense-sy...

c0nsumer• 11 years ago

The Nike system was a last line of defense against bomber formations. The main idea near the end of the program was to set off a surface-to-air nuke in the middle of a formation and take it out. (Yes, that means near the population centers which the Nike sites were situated around. ICBMs nullified the usefulness of the Nikes and they were all decommissioned around 1974.)

Modern air defenses are the anti-ballistic missile stuff, interceptors located at the borders, etc.

angersock2• 11 years ago

That gives you insight into the sort of absolute war they were prepared to fight. The world is, in some ways, a better place today.

dsfyu404ed• 11 years ago

That's kind of misleading, it went more like:

"it appears as though our missile attacks the center of mass of tight formations, downing none of the aircraft"

"let's put a nuke on it and call it a feature"

InclinedPlane3• 11 years ago

To be fair, exploding a few kiloton nuke at several km altitude (probably 30,000 ft or so) would have fairly minimal impact on the ground, and would, of course, bet totally worthwhile if it meant preventing dropping multi-megaton bombs.

sandworm1013• 11 years ago

There is no general air defence these days. There are point installations protecting military targets, on military land, but there aren't batteries of missiles to defend large cities. If needed they launch intercept aircraft. (imho those military point defence installations are turned off most all of the time. See below.)

Recently in Vancouver we hosted the woman's world cup. Joe Biden was in town. And so was this (http://i.imgur.com/pvxYN49.jpg). That's the USS Stockdale entering Vancouver port to provide him cover. It left port the day after he left town. All very quiet. Local news didn't speak of this big thing coming in unescorted. I only noticed after one of our boats went screaming by the dog beach (http://i.imgur.com/G7lY9s4.jpg) about half an hour before. It was probably leaving to make room at the dock. When the Stockdale left it was followed by a tug and a rib from the local cops... they probably learned about it at the same time I did.

Stockdale's itinerary listing it docking in North Vancouver. http://www.uscarriers.net/ddg106history.htm

The lack of air defence is probably a good thing. The error rate, the risk of shooting down something by accident, would be unacceptable.

jwiley• 11 years ago

My 1.5 cents: probably coincidence. It would be difficult to get naval vessels to follow him around the world, for example during his trip to land-locked Mongolia:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/vic...

jandrewrogers• 11 years ago

Air defense batteries have limited use if you have excellent global surveillance capabilities -- they will know about an impending air attack long before it happens. Consequently, they are really only used to protect critical "first strike" targets. With ample warning, there are many ways to protect areas from air attack, including combat air patrol.

Also, air defense and ballistic missile defense have largely converged. The newer systems are designed to intercept just about everything that moves from sea level to low-earth orbit. It is one of the reasons the ABM treaty had to be scrapped -- limiting missile defense was tantamount to limiting air defense.

cameldrv• 11 years ago

It's basically minimal at this point. Most of it comes down to cold war history. In the 50s, the threat was Russian bombers coming over the pole, so the U.S. built a big air defense system, including SAGE, Nike, BOMARC, and F-102s and F-106s. By the 60s, the Russians were concentrating on ballistic missiles, and not much more work was put into air defense in the U.S. By the 70s, a lot of the original 50s system was removed for obsolescence with no full replacement. The Russians kept improving their system though, and it remains quite powerful. Some of this comes down to geography though. There are multiple lines of radars across Canada, and so the U.S. would have had much more warning time of a Russian attack. By the 80s, a smaller group of F-15s were presumably adequate to defend the U.S., nevermind the missiles.

spiritplumber• 11 years ago

And yet they managed to sink the Avro Arrow :(

WalterGR• 11 years ago

    By the 60s, the Russians were concentrating on ballistic missiles,
    and not much more work was put into air defense in the U.S.

How does one defend against ICBMs? Is that not considered "air defense"?

    By the 80s, a smaller group of F-15s were presumably 
    adequate to defend the U.S., nevermind the missiles.

"Nevermind the missiles"? Do you mean: a smaller group of F-15s was adequate to defend the US if by "defend the US" we mean completely ignoring the missiles?

    The Russians kept improving their system though, and
    it remains quite powerful.

Where can one learn more, or what web search keywords are good?

dgfv1• 11 years ago

They make some nice shoes, too.

vt240• 11 years ago

The site in Poulsbo, WA had been flooded for years. When I was a high school student, we used to go have parties there. The whole campus was 10-20 acres and most of the buildings were still intact, although pretty ransacked. Similar to the sites I visited in the Anchorage, AK area. I think it was about 10 years ago they started to prep the site to build a new Walmart. The construction crew pumped all of the launchers out and let me go down and take a look around. It was pretty neat to see everything that had been under water for most likely 30 years. I took a bunch of slides I'll have to dig up one of these days. I still haven't made it to see the museum. Most of these neat military sites are private property now, although I think most of the Nike installations were given to local government orgs.

craigjb• 11 years ago

This AT&T Bell Labs documentary about the anti-ballistic missile defense program is eye-opening. The program roots are in the Nike anti-bomber defense program. The complexity of radar and digital signal processing technology in the 1960-70s is incredible (they even had stylus touch-screen interfaces).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARx2-wRn9-Y

elcapitan• 11 years ago

"Nike - Just do it." :D scnr

Nike Missile Sites of the San Francisco Bay Area (2001)

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