Testing the Shield

All week, the reports from U.S. intelligence sources were ominous. East-West tensions had reached the snapping point. The Soviet Union was mobilizing. An air strike against the U.S. and Canada was imminent. Then, on Saturday morning, came confirmation from North American Air Defense Command radar-loaded aircraft patrolling the Pacific near Midway: enemy planes were U.S.-bound.

These reports were phony. They had been planted as an elaborate preparatory touch to the biggest air-defense exercise in history--Sky Shield II. When Sky Shield II actually started last weekend, all commercial and private flying over the U.S. and Canada ceased for twelve hours, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. C.S.T., and some 2,100 commercial flights were canceled.

Yet North American skies were far from empty. Aloft were 1,800 NORAD fighter planes, from long-ranging F-101s to speedy new F-106s on some 6,000 intercept sorties. On the radarscopes of distant destroyers and aircraft, of early-warning stations from the Canadian Arctic and Alaska to towers planted deep in Atlantic waters, appeared a multitude of bogey blips. They were caused by about 250 Strategic Air Command B-478, B-528 and refueling tankers, along with Vulcan bombers of Britain's Royal Air Force. Many of these planes were homebound from foreign bases; others had slipped from their North American stations to turn around over the Pacific and Atlantic and simulate an enemy strike.

Some droned 30,000 ft. above Eastern population centers on fake bomb runs. Some roared in just 500 ft. above coastal waters. All radiated spurious electronic signals to confuse defense radar. In Colorado Springs, NORAD's commander, General Laurence S. Kuter, 56, sat in front of a giant battle screen in a windowless building, directing the simulated interceptor action that was taking place over 14 million square miles.

The obvious difference between Sky Shield II and the real thing was that no bombs exploded, no antiaircraft missiles were launched, no guns were fired. But there was another difference; it would take days and weeks of study to assess the effectiveness of NORAD's response to the make-believe attack. If that attack had been by someone else and in earnest, the results would be all too apparent all too soon.

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