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11 October 2002 |
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http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/f/fylingdales/ |
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RAF Fylingdales is located alongside the A169 north of Pickering and easily identified by the 'pyramid' seen from the road. We
started with a windscreen tour of the site including the fire station, police station, power house, Serco workshops and former site of the now long gone 'golfball' radar
arrays. Our guide was one of the site Warrant Officers for this part of the tour.
We were informed that there were some 400 personnel on site of which the majority were contractors from Serco with only 75 RAF staff the majority of which lived off
site. There is a single USAF liaison officer who has 9 US civilians working with him as contractors. The MOD guard service has 19 staff and the MOD police is 60 strong
but is being increased to 100 due to the risk of peace protesters invading the site (there is a small camp nearby). The site has a MOD Police checkpoint by the road and a
further checkpoints at each of the fences. The outer fence is topped by an 8000 volt electrified section and all entrance gates can be locked and razor wire placed in the
opening on large metal truss frames. Having finished the tour in the bus we disembarked at the main SSPAR (Solid State Phased Array Radar) 'pyramid' building and went in
via the 2 security gates. We then took the lift to the briefing room on the second floor. Here we were met by the base commander who welcomed us and gave us a highly
detailed and very entertaining presentation on the history of the site and its' current role and function.
We were handed examples of the radar emitters and the transmitters and receivers. Unfortunately these were not available to purchase from the souvenir shop!
The site was originally going to be on Fylingdales moor a few miles up the road but prior to building commencing concern was expressed that the site was right on the
cliff edge and therefore very vulnerable to attack from a RPG or similar fired from a boat. The decision was therefore taken to move it inland a little way and the
current site was selected. This is Snod Hill and rather than name the site 'RAF Snod' the Fylingdales name was retained.
The site first became live in 1962 and the 'golfballs' were replaced by the SSPAR in 1992. Each of the golfballs had a radar dish in it which constantly panned back
and forth scanning the sky. This system was accurate to detect a single object within 240 nautical miles and could track a modest number of objects simultaneously.
The SSPAR can track object as small as 0.5sqm and has a separation range of 1000 yards. It can track up to 800 objects at the same time.
After the talk there was a lengthy question and answer session including questions on the protection factor of the buildings. The main bunker has 3 metre thick walls
and the entire pyramid is fully shielded against EMP. In the event of a ballistic missile attack the role of Fylingdales is to provide information on the number and
direction of inbound missiles to the Nuclear Ops. Tasking Centre, Defence Crisis Management Centre, UK Strike Command and also to the US at NORAD and NATO. There are 2
other similar radar's at Thule in Greenland and a site at Clear in Alaska but Fylingdales has 360 degree coverage and an effective tracking range of 3000 miles. Should
the site be hit by an in bound missile then it's role would be taken over by one of the other radar's.
We then commenced the tour of the building. We left the presentation room and took the lift up a couple of floors to the power room. Here we saw the feeds from each of
the radar emitters enter it's control cabinet and we viewed the terminal system that gave constant status on each of the array faces. From here we walked into the next room which was looking onto the rear of one of the array faces. Our guide explained that the radar 'pulses' its' signal and that this
pulsing requires huge bursts of current. The site has it's own power station (and bore hole) and does not rely on the national grid. The transmitters have huge capacitors
which store the current and can then discharge it when the face pulses and we could see this happening on the power gauges by each section of the array. Our guide
explained that this method stopped the lights going dim every couple of seconds!! Each face has some 2750 array emitters but only 2500 actually work. This is to 'shape'
the radar beam and each of the emitters has a heating coil which can be switched on to help prevent the build up of snow and ice (very useful up there). From the face we returned to the lift and went down to the ground floor where we entered through a huge blast door into the bunker. Having passed the blast door we
passed 2 gas tight doors and walked down a corridor to the main ops. room. On entering the room we were greeted with a cheery 'hello' from the RAF staff at their stations and the Crew Chief split us up in small groups to go to the various
workstations where we would be given an explanation of the display system. Our operator on terminal 4B was a very nice young lady in RAF uniform (steady lads!) and we
received a very extensive explanation of what we were seeing on screen. Whenever the radar detects an object it searches its' registry for an identical course and speed.
If it finds a direct match it tags the item on screen with a number and the operator can watch it track until it goes out of range. If the item is unidentified then it
will alert the operator who can then run a series of checks for interference etc. to confirm if the object is genuine or not. At this point a 60 second clock starts
ticking on screen during which time the commanding officer must make a decision as to if the object is a 'validated launch' or not.
Our hosts ran a tape of a missile launch from the Barents sea which had been recorded some time earlier and we were able to see the plot appear on screen and follow
the drill and identification of the object to validation point.
We all asked heaps of questions and were told that there had not been a validated launch call for at least 3 years although one was made some time ago when a Soviet
Typhoon class submarine launched a test missile from the polar ice cap towards Russia. Normally all sides involved in test launches of ballistic missiles notifies
everyone else so as not to cause false alarms of attack. On this occasion the Russians hadn't informed anybody and tensions was said to have been 'high.'
All too soon we had to go back to the bus but we ended up at the on site bar where we consumed tea, biccies and lager.
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