Cavalier Space Force Station,

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...

, is a

United States Space Force The United States Space Force (USSF) is the space service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and the world's only independent space force. Along with its sister branch, the U.S. Air Force, the Space ...

installation, where the

10th Space Warning Squadron The United States Space Force's 10th Space Warning Squadron (10 SWS), is a missile warning unit located at Cavalier Space Force Station, North Dakota. Mission 10 SWS provides tactical warning and attack assessment of sea-launched and intercontin ...

Space Delta 4 Space Delta 4 (DEL 4) is a United States Space Force unit responsible for providing strategic and theater missile warning to the United States and its international partners. It operates three constellations of Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) s ...

monitors and tracks potential missile launches against North America with the GE AN/FPQ-16 Enhanced Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack Characterization System (PARCS). The PARCS also monitors and tracks over half of all earth-orbiting objects to enable space situation awareness and space control. In addition to contractors,

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection ...

has US and Canadian military members assigned to the facility.

AN/FPQ-16 PARCS

The AN/FPQ-16 PARCS is a

solid state phased array radar system The Solid State Phased Array Radar System (SSPARS, colloquially "BMEWS radar network'" as late as 2004) is a United States Space Force radar, computer, and communications system for missile warning and space surveillance "at five (5) geographica ...

housed "on a plain just east of the

Pembina Escarpment The Pembina Escarpment is a scarp that runs from South Dakota to Manitoba, and forms the western wall of the Red River Valley. The height of the escarpment above the river valley is . Geology The escarpment was originally formed by the undercu ...

" in a 37 m (121 ft) with a single-faced phased array radar pointed northward over

Hudson Bay Hudson Bay ( crj, text=ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, translit=Wînipekw; crl, text=ᐐᓂᐹᒄ, translit=Wînipâkw; iu, text=ᑲᖏᖅᓱᐊᓗᒃ ᐃᓗᐊ, translit=Kangiqsualuk ilua or iu, text=ᑕᓯᐅᔭᕐᔪᐊᖅ, translit=Tasiujarjuaq; french: b ...

. In normal operation PARCS can spot an object the size of a

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

(24 cm) at 3000 km (2000 miles). Tests during the 1970s and 1980s showed that with proposed software updates (not carried out) it could spot objects less than 9 cm in size. It analyzes more than 20,000 tracks per day, from giant satellites to space debris. The PARCS building includes an underground power plant with five, 16 cylinder dual-fuel (diesel/natural gas) engines manufactured by Cooper Bessemer driving 5 General Electric generators for a total output of 14 megawatts.

History

The facility was built as one site of the

Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex (SRMSC) was a cluster of military facilities near Langdon, North Dakota, that supported the United States Army's Safeguard Program, Safeguard anti-ballistic missile program. The complex provided launch an ...

for the

Safeguard Program The Safeguard Program was a U.S. Army anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system designed to protect the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman ICBM silos from attack, thus preserving the US's nuclear deterrent fleet. It was intended primarily to protect against th ...

's anti-ballistic missile defense, with the PAR providing detection data for computing preliminary trajectories to be provided to the

Missile Site Radar In military terminology, a missile is a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously unguided rocket i ...

(the complex was deactivated in 1976). In 1977, the USAF acquired the site and expanded it into the Concrete Missile Early Warning System (CMEWS) named for the nearby Concrete ND community. The military installation was named for Cavalier ND in 1983 when Concrete's post office closed.

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc (BAE) is a British multinational arms, security, and aerospace company based in London, England. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe, and ranked the seventh-largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. ...

maintained the PARCS site from 2003 - 2017.
Summit Technical Solutions, LLC
took over the Operations, Maintenance and Logistics support of the PARCS site in October 2017. On 30 July 2021 Cavalier Air Force Station was renamed Cavalier Space Force Station.

Based units

Notable units based at Cavalier Air Force Station. United States Space Force:

Space Operations Command Space Operations Command (SpOC) is the United States Space Force's space operations, cyber operations, and intelligence field command. It is headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado and serves as the U.S. Space Force's service com ...

(SpOC) *

(GSU) The 10th SWS is a

Geographically Separate Unit In the United States military a Geographically Separate Unit (GSU) is a base that is physically separate from, yet not autonomous of its "parent" base. GSUs are "owned" by their parent organization and are typically quite small. Assignment to a ...

, which although based at Cavalier, is subordinate to Space Delta 4 based at

Buckley Space Force Base Buckley Space Force Base is a United States Space Force base in Aurora, Colorado named after United States Army Air Service First Lieutenant John Harold Buckley. The base is run by Space Base Delta 2, with major units including the U.S. Space For ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

References

External links

*
Chapter 8: Perimeter Acquisition Radar
ABM Research and Development at Bell Laboratories: Project History at the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex History Page.* * {{USAF Space Command Installations of the United States Space Force Military installations established in 1983 Air Force Space Command radar stations Buildings and structures in Pembina County, North Dakota Historic American Engineering Record in North Dakota