An Air Defense Direction Center (ADDC) was a type of United States command post for assessing

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

radar tracks, assigning height requests to available height-finder radars, and for "Weapons Direction": coordinating

command guidance Command guidance is a type of missile guidance in which a ground station or aircraft relay signals to a guided missile via radio control or through a wire connecting the missile to the launcher and tell the missile where to steer to intercept its ...

of aircraft from more than 1 site for

ground-controlled interception Ground-controlled interception (GCI) is an air defence tactic whereby one or more radar stations or other observational stations are linked to a command communications centre which guides interceptor aircraft to an airborne target. This tactic wa ...

("weapons assignment"). As with the

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Aircraft Warning Service CONUS defense network, a " manual air defense system" was used through the 1950s (e.g.,

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ; , CDAAN), 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 pr ...

/ ADC used a " plotting board" at the Ent command center.) Along with 182

radar stations Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), direction (geometry), direction (azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to det ...

at "the end of 1957, ADC operated … 17 control centers", and the

Ground Observation Corps The Ground Observer Corps (GOC), sometimes erroneously referred to as the Ground ''Observation'' Corps, was the name of two American civil defense organizations during the middle 20th century. World War II organization The first Ground Observer ...

was TBD on TBD. With the formation of NORAD, several types of ADDCs were planned by

Air Defense Command Aerospace Defense Command was a major command (military formation), command of the United States Air Force, responsible for air defense of the continental United States. It was activated in 1968 and disbanded in 1980. Its predecessor, Air De ...

: *Joint Direction Center, a USAF ADDC collocated with an

Army Air Defense Command Post An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...

, AADCP (together designated a " NORAD Control Center"). **Alaskan Joint Direction Center, at 2 sites:

Fire Island Fire Island is the large center island of the outer barrier islands parallel to the South Shore of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy once again divided Fire Island into two islands. Together, these two isl ...

and Murphy Dome Air Force Station for the Alaskan Air Command Semi-Automatic Defense System (ALSADS) *Semi-Automatic Direction Center (SAGE Direction Center), an ADCC (e.g., the " Duluth Sector Direction Center") with a

command, control, and coordination system A command, control, and coordination system (CCCS) was a Cold War computer system for United States command posts (e.g., Army Air Defense Command Posts) to use a single location to coordinate multiple units' ground-controlled interception (e.g., US ...

that provided the

Semi-Automatic Ground Environment The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of mainframe computer, large computers and associated computer network, networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image ...

(SAGE), e.g., AN/FSQ-7 or AN/GSA-51 (in 1958, NORAD "forecast full SAGE direction center capability" by January 1963.) **Combined Direction-Combat Center, a USAF ADDC collocated with a SAGE Combat Center (e.g., DC-03 & CC-01 at Hancock Field for the Syracuse Air Defense Sector) **SCC Direction Center (SCC/DC), a USAF ADDC to be collocated with a planned Super Combat Center in a nuclear bunker (no SCCs, SCC/DCs, or above-ground DCs with AN/FSQ-32 were ever completed) *Manual Direction Center, an ADCC without a SAGE CCCS, successors to the Manual Air Defense Control Centers of the Permanent System (

cf. The abbreviation cf. (short for either Latin or , both meaning 'compare') is generally used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. However some sources offer differing or even contr ...

ADCCs with a " pre-SAGE semiautomatic intercept system") *NIKE direction center, Army

Project Nike Project Nike (Greek: Nike (mythology), Νίκη, "Victory") was a United States Army, U.S. Army project proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight (missile), line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project del ...

AADCPs for coordinating

surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-ai ...

fire from multiple batteries, e.g., W-13DC (at the Fort Meade radar station) through LA-45DC (

Fort MacArthur Fort MacArthur is a former United States Army installation in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California (now the port community of Los Angeles). A small section remains in military use by the United States Air Force as a housing and administrative ann ...

Direction Center), 9 of which were within Missile Master nuclear bunkers. Most ADDCs were replaced by Regional Operations Control Centers of the Joint Surveillance System ( FOC on December 23, 1980).

References

{{Reflist , refs= {{Cite report , last1=Del Papa , first1=Dr. E. Michael , last2=Warner , first2=Mary P. , date=October 1987 , title=A Historical Chronology of the Electronic Systems Division 1947-1986 , url=http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a201708.pdf , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131224105532/http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a201708.pdf , url-status=live , archive-date=December 24, 2013 , number=ESD-TR-88-276 (AD-A201 708) , accessdate=2012-07-19 , quote=''so-called Semi-Automatic Direction Center System, later known as…Semi-Automatic Ground Environment System, in essence, the Lincoln Transition System.'' {{Cite report , last=McMullen , first=R. F. , date=15 Feb 1980 , title=History of Air Defense Weapons 1946–1962 , volume=ADC Historical Study No. 14 , publisher=Historical Division, Office of information, HQ ADC , pages=211, 306 , quote=the GPA-37 electronic heart of an advanced system of ground controlled interception which immediately preceded SAGE, and with SAGE itself. … The AN/GPA-35 was a pre-SAGE control system that would be used until SAGE was ready. {{Cite report , last=Schaffel , first=Kenneth , year=1991 , title=Emerging Shield: The Air Force and the Evolution of Continental Air Defense 1945-1960 , url=https://archive.org/details/TheEmergingShield , format=45MB

pdf Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

, work=General Histories , publisher= Office of Air Force History , isbn=0-912799-60-9 , accessdate=2011-09-26 , quote=A SAGE component, a 64 x 64 K">kilobyte.html" ;"title="kilobyte">Kmagnetic core memory … SAGE direction center. This installation is located at Stewart Air Force Base in New York state. …[Hancock Field] combined direction-combat center was located at Syracuse, New York. , url-access=registration [captions of pp. 198, 208, & 265 photos] NOTE: Schaffel's history uses the same name as "The Emerging Shield: The Air Defense Ground Environment," Air University Quarterly Review 8, no. 2 (spring 1956). North American Aerospace Defense Command Military command and control installations Air defense