
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 26, 1990                   TAG: 9004260139
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BANGOR, MAINE                                LENGTH: Short

NEW RADAR LENGTHENS VIEW

A new radar system that will allow military observers to look over the Earth's horizon and get an earlier warning of enemy aircraft or drug-smuggling planes has been turned over to the Air Force.

By being able to detect enemy aircraft farther away, the Air Force will get as long as 3 1/2 hours to respond to a threat of an attack, compared with perhaps only a few minutes with conventional radar systems, officials said.

The $680 million Backscatter system turned over to the military Tuesday gives the Air Force eyes over a semicircular, 4.5 million-square-mile swath across the Atlantic from Greenland to Cuba, the Air Force said.

The operations center is based in the outskirts of this city in central Maine. The antennas are in Moscow - Moscow, Maine, that is.

The Maine system is the first of four that will eventually form an early warning shield around most of North America's perimeter. Its range of up to 1,800 miles is nearly 10 times greater than that of conventional radar.

While the over-the-horizon system was designed primarily to give the Air Force more time to spot enemy bombers, it will also be useful in detecting small planes carrying illegal narcotics, said Col. John O. Lenz, the system's program director.

Enemy cruise missiles, however, would be "a very difficult target . . . perhaps the most difficult target for this type of radar," Lenz said.

The system gains its extraordinary reach by bouncing radar signals off the Earth's ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere, enabling the radar to hopscotch over the planet's curve.

by CNB