Arctic Warning

Men and materials moved north by air last week to launch the biggest arctic defense project the U.S. and Canada have yet undertaken: construction of the Distant Early Warning line (DEW). When the system is finished in about two years, its radar and other detection devices will keep around-the-clock alert from the Yukon to Greenland against intruding Soviet aircraft.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Project scientists first recommended construction of the far-north warning line three years ago. Their estimate of its cost: $1 billion. At a time when the Soviet Union's best long-range bomber was a 300-m.p.h. copy of the U.S. B29, neither the U.S. nor Canada was willing to invest that much in a line 1,800 miles north of. the continent's main industrial centers. Priority went instead to the Pinetree line of radar and fighter control stations north of the U.S. border, and to the mid-Canada line of automatic warning devices along the 55th parallel.

But as further research stepped up the efficiency of electronic detection, and Air Force engineers learned to cut arctic construction time by prefabrication and preassembly techniques, cost estimates for the DEW line dropped to about $250 million. After the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb and displayed a 600-m.p.h. long-range jet bomber last year, the U.S. and Canada decided to go ahead with DEW. Equipment too bulky to fly will move in by sea convoy during the brief shipping season of 1955 and 1956.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.