The Havre Air Force Station

The station began as a squadron and a different place name. The 778th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron was activated on March 1, 1951, at Simpson, close to the Canadian line, and the site took the name Havre Air Force Station on December 1, 1953. In 1961 it joined the SAGE network, passing radar tracks by data link to the direction center at Malmstrom. The bomb scoring the panel ends with had begun near Havre in 1965, with mobile radar set up for Strategic Air Command's Fairchild Trophy competition.

What the plaque says

The Havre Air Force Station After the Soviet Union's detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949 and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, tensions mounted between the United States and the USSR. To prevent a surprise communist attack, the US Air Force established a radar network to protect American air space. Using the most sophisticated computer and radar technology available, dedicated Air Force officers and airmen manned the stations in some of the most isolated places in the country. Located about thirty miles northwest of here, the Havre Air Force Station was one of eight radar stations in Montana. Established in 1952, it was the home of the 778th A C&W (Aircraft Control & Warning) Squadron. The station's four radars tracked both friendly and enemy aircraft, feeding the data to the control center at Malmstrom Air Force Base at Great Falls. In the event of a Soviet sneak attack, the station relayed information to Malmstrom, which would direct fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles to intercept the invaders. With the advent of nuclear warhead-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in the 1960s, the radar stations soon became obsolete. The Havre Air Force station then functioned as a component of the BUIC II and III system that functioned as a backup in case the Malmstrom direction center was rendered inoperative. The Air Force closed the Havre radar station in 1979. For a few years it served as a NORAD electronic bomb scoring site before closing permanently in 1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump — 0.5 mi
  Two thousand years of bison kills in a bluff behind a Havre shopping mall, with the bones left lying where they were found.
• Havre Beneath the Streets — 1.2 mi
  Basement storefronts under a railroad town that burned twice in one January day in 1904, furnished now as a tour.
• Fort Assinniboine — 5.7 mi
  The brick border post whose Buffalo Soldiers deported the Cree in 1896, and whose land became the Cree's reservation twenty years later.

More markers nearby

• Havre — steps away
• Fort Assinniboine — 5.5 mi