BMEWS

To counter the suborbital spacecraft, an adversary would need to (1) build a BMEWS that provides total perimeter coverage and (2) completely redesign his missiles to have sufficient energy to reach space.

After the BMEWS radars were jammed, commanders even put additional forces in a "ready to launch" status, thinking the Soviet Union was to blame for the disruptions.

He cited several operational considerations, foremost among them being to reduce the number of false alarms that satellites generated in the new Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS).

In Europe, the BMEWS radars at Fylingdale Moor in the United Kingdom and Thule, Greenland (under Danish sovereignty) are to be upgraded.

At the time, major programs were underway at the Thule Air Base in Greenland, including the joint American-Canadian Distant Early Warning (DEW Line) Radar Sites, closely followed by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site (BMEWS).

The issue then was not only the 1953 actions of the Danes or Americans which saw the Inuit bundled up and moved away from their ancestral village, but also the new factor of US upgrading of the BMEWS (ballistic missile early warning system) radar.

The Americans, anticipating a Soviet attack across the Arctic circle and Canada, built a series of elaborate radar networks of which the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line and the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) line were the most effective.

Shown for comparison are the maximum possible EIRP of a military BMEWS missile-warning radar and the Arecibo radar.

Flt Sgt Flanagan is jointly responsible for training of RAF staff to use BMEWS - Britain's Ballistic Missile Early Warning System.

It turned out that the Ballistic Missile Early Warming System (BMEWS) radar in Thule, Greenland, had spotted the rising moon.