Ok, so I got obsessed with the remote DEW locations in northern Canada and Alaska and spent entirely too much time on Google Maps zooming in to where these awfully remote stations were located. See my earlier thread on how DEW sites were powered
My Google searches are failing so I bring the question here: did the Soviets develop something similar to DEW in remote locations like the US? And if so, can I check any of them out on Google Maps? If not, what technology did the USSR use instead?
They had multiple early warning radars. Check out the wikipedia entries for Duga and Dnester/Dnepr (both known under the NATO name Henhouse). A planned upgrade to the Darya system got interrupted by the end of the Cold War. Only 2 of 8 planned locations were built.
all the entries have links to map locations/coordinates. I didn’t click through to check.
Thanks DinoR! I was already familiar with the Duga systems thanks to Chernobyl and an obsession with shortwave radio in the 80s.
Darya is interesting. It looks like it has some of the same elements as the Safeguard Program in the US. I wonder why the Soviets trended towards a few HUGE stations like Duga and Darya instead of a bunch of small stations like the original DEW? Maybe because it would have been difficult to build (and power) something that big in the middle of nowhere.
DEW was lower power and much shorter range than the over the horizon systems I linked to. About 90% of the Canadian population lives in about a 100 mile band along the US border. In comparison the Soviet Union had some important locations without that much buffer of land between the and North America. We could get plenty of warning of Soviet bombers with those less powerful systems. We generally had better satellite detection systems to do things like watch their missile fields for launches instead of relying as heavily on OTH systems.
The target detection range on the S-300 mobile system (first fielded in 1967) is a better comparison to the ranges of radars in the DEW system.
Weren’t a lot of the early warning for aircraft radars under the auspices of PVO-Strany, and its assorted air defense districts? Things like Tall King, Spoon Rest, and Long Track? I thought the Hen House and the like mainly looked for RVs, not atmospheric objects?