Daily News-Miner:
FAIRBANKS — The Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency plan to spend nearly $70 million to upgrade a radar site at the far end of the Aleutian Islands that has been in use since 1976 and which has seen its primary mission change to warning of ballistic missile attacks against the United States.
The radar, named Cobra Dane, remains a part of the nation’s missile defense system even with the advent of other advance-warning components, including the Long Range Discrimination Radar being built at Clear Air Force Station.
The primary mission of the Cobra Dane radar site was intelligence gathering until 1994, though it did have secondary missions of warning of missile launches and tracking objects in space. The Air Force stopped using the site for missile warning in 1994, and for five years ceased using it for space surveillance.
