As defined in the initial proposal, MIDAS would use infrared sensors from high above the Soviet Union to detect ICBM launches and give early warning of a thermonuclear attack. In February 1959, ARPA submitted an initial project development plan to the Air Force. With the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Subsystem G was taken over by that organization and given the codename MiDAS in November 1958. In response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik and the appearance of the ICBM threat, Subsystem G was added to WS-117L before the end of 1957. The company that was to become the Lockheed-Martin Corporation which had been hired to design, develop, and manufacture the two series of satellites, suggested several other satellite programs to fill supporting roles, including a satellite that would use infrared sensors and a telescope to detect the heat produced by heavy bombers and ICBMs. These included the Corona series of observation satellites and the SAMOS satellite. Air Force had ordered the development of an advanced reconnaissance satellite to provide continuous surveillance of “preselected areas of the Earth” in order “to determine the status of a potential enemy’s war-making capability.” The result of this order was the creation of a then-secret USAF program known as WS-117L, which controlled the development of the first generation of American reconnaissance satellites. In addition, the MIDAS system should have been able to confirm radar detections from BMEWS of a thermonuclear attack, hence reducing the chances of an accidental nuclear false alarm from the radar system. Hence, the Soviets would be deterred from launching such an attack by a valid threat of nuclear retaliation. The MIDAS system, as planned, would extend this warning time to about 30 minutes, giving the extra time needed for all of the Strategic Air Command's nuclear-armed heavy bombers to take off from their air bases, and hence proving to the Soviet government that it could not destroy these bombers in a sneak attack. Air Force.Īccurate calculations had already shown that the BMEWS system would give just ten to 25 minutes of warning in the case of an ICBM attack. Only when the warheads had risen above the horizon could they be detected and warnings passed on by the U.S. Due to the location of the Soviet Union on the other side of the Northern Hemisphere, the potential Soviet ICBM sites were thousands of miles over the horizon from the BMEWS radar stations that were under construction at Thule and Clear Air Force Station, Alaska (and later on, in England), and the BMEWS stations, as huge as they are, could not detect the ICBM warheads immediately after their launching. However, this system was hampered by the inherent limitations of radar systems and the curvature of the Earth. This system would use radar to detect incoming ICBM warheads and give about 20 minutes of warning of an ICBM attack. To give an early warning of any Soviet sneak ICBM attack, the governments of the United States, Canada, and Denmark (with the authority over Greenland, where the main radar station was built at Thule Air Base) agreed to build the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS). The R-7, the booster rocket that launched Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, could be loaded instead with a hydrogen bomb, bringing the threat of a surprise nuclear Pearl Harbor-style attack on the United States and Canada. The event, while a scientific triumph, also signified that the Soviet Union now had the capability to attack the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). On October 4, 1957, from the Tyuratam range in the Kazakh SSR, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. Though MIDAS failed in its primary role as a system of infrared early-warning satellites, it pioneered the technologies needed in successor systems. MiDAS represented one element of the United States's first generation of reconnaissance satellites that also included the Corona and SAMOS series. Three of the system's 12 launches ended in failure, and the remaining nine satellites provided crude infrared early-warning coverage of the Soviet Union until the project was replaced by the Defense Support Program. Originally intended to serve as a complete early-warning system working in conjunction with the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, cost and reliability concerns limited the project to a research and development role. The Missile Defense Alarm System, or MIDAS, was a United States Air Force Air Defense Command system of 12 early-warning satellites that provided limited notice of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile launches between 19. For the subsequent SEWS system, see Defense Support Program. "Satellite Early Warning System" redirects here.
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