A Super Combat Center (SCC) was a planned

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 ...

command and control facility for ten

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 ...

regions/Air Divisions in Canada and the United States. For installation in nuclear bunkers, the command posts were to replace the last of the planned

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 ...

Combat Centers to be built for vacuum tube AN/FSQ-8 Combat Control Centrals. The survivable SCCs were to use solid-state (transistorized) AN/FSQ-32 equipment which was to provide 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 ...

for operators at 10 Air Divisions — 5 of the centers were to also serve as Air Defense Direction Centers ("SCC/DCs") for commanding

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 ...

in sectors of the 27th, 30th, 32nd, 33rd, and 35th Air Divisions. ADC's November 1958 plan to complete the hardened SCCs by April 1964 included fielding 3 additional AN/FSQ-32 systems above-ground for the Albuquerque, Miami, and Shreveport sectors. (Plans for vacuum tube

AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central The AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central, referred to as the Q7 for short, was a computerized air defense command and control system. It was used by the United States Air Force for ground-controlled interception as part of the Semi-Automatic Grou ...

s to be installed in hardened "cube" buildings were continued for 21 SAGE Air Defense Direction Centers for most of the 27 NORAD Sectors.)

Description

SCCs were to be able to withstand overpressure as from a

nuclear explosion A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, th ...

. Some caverns were to be excavated in mountains:

Kennesaw Mountain Kennesaw Mountain is a mountain between Marietta and Kennesaw, Georgia in the United States with a summit elevation of . It is the highest point in the core ( urban and suburban) metro Atlanta area, and fifth after further-north exurban count ...

GA and Whitehorse Mountain NY for the Raleigh and Syracuse sectors, respectively. In 1956, ARDC had sponsored "development of a

transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...

ized…computer" by IBM and in June 1958, the "SAGE Solid State Computer…was estimated to have a computing capability of seven times" the AN/FSQ-7. ADC's November 1958 plan to field—by April 1964—the 13 solid state AN/FSQ-7A (designated AN/FSQ-32 after December 1958) was for divisions at

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

St Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

San Antonio San Antonio ( ; Spanish for " Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the third-largest metropolitan area in Texas and the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the ...

, Raleigh, Syracuse, Chicago, Spokane,

Minot Minot ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Ward County, North Dakota, United States, in the state's north-central region. It is most widely known for the Air Force base approximately north of the city. With a population of 48,377 at the 2 ...

, Portland, Phoenix, and 3 above-ground sites for

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), also known as ABQ, Burque, the Duke City, and in the past 'the Q', is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Bernal ...

, and

Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, third-most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. The bulk of Shreveport is in Caddo Parish, Lo ...

divisions. By December 1959 an SCC was also planned for the 26th Air Division ( Denver Air Defense Sector).

Cancellation

DoD's June 19, 1959, Continental Air Defense Program reduced the number of SCCs to 7 and on December 9, 1959, the USAF eliminated both the SCC for the Denver sector and the Albuquerque sector's above-ground AN/FSQ-32. On December 21, 1959, the Office of Defense Research and Engineering informed NORAD a stop order had been placed on AN/FSQ-32 production and in January 1960, the Office of the Secretary of Defense recommended the SCC program be canceled (cancellation was March 18, 1960.) The canceled SAGE SCC/DC planned for the 35th NORAD Region/ Ottawa Air Defense Sector was replaced with the only vacuum tube AN/FSQ-7 deployed underground. Construction of

CFB North Bay Canadian Forces Base North Bay, also CFB North Bay, is an Canadian Forces base, air force base located at the City of North Bay, Ontario, North Bay, Ontario about northwest of Ottawa. The base is subordinate to 1 Canadian Air Division, Winnip ...

for the Ottawa sector had started in 1959 for a bunker ~ underground, and the facility was used for DC-31 (operational October 1, 1963) (3 AN/FSQ-8 Combat Centers were operational in 1963.) To replace the GCI contingency capability that SCCs would have provided when an AN/FSQ-7 Direction Center and its neighboring DCs had been incapacitated,

deployed pre-SAGE General Electric AN/GPA-37 Course Directing Groups at NORAD Control Centers and other dispersed sites for Back-Up Interceptor Control.

References

{{Reflist , refs= {{Cite web , last=Page , first=Thomas E. , date=June 16, 2009 , title=IBM SAGE , url=https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-ibm-sage.html , format=anecdotal message post , publisher=Ed-Thelen.org , accessdate=2013-02-21 , quote=A number of Super-SAGE Combat Centers (AN/FSQ-32) were planned, but none was built. Most were to have built underground… White Horse Mountain near

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

, NY… One prototype Q-32 was installed at the IBM programming center in

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

, CA. (T. E. Page cites: ''Shield of Faith'' by Bruce Briggs (Simon and Schuster, 1988.) {{citation , title=NORAD/CONAD Historical Summary: July–December 1958 , quote=In September 1956, CONAD proposed to the JCS the collocation of the Missile Master and the Air Force's AN/GPA-37 in ten areas. The Office of the Secretary of Defense concurred on 30 October 1956. Proposed installations of the United States Air Force North American Aerospace Defense Command Nuclear bunkers in the United States Nuclear bunkers in Canada