The Surveillance Room

This is the first step of the process. If the track is not detected and initated nothing further would have happened.

The troops who toiled here had the responsibility of the initial detection of all aircraft in the system exception of interceptors.

This is where most of the newest troops worked and were trained bu many dedicated NCOs and officers. It was tiring duty. During the periods of normal readiness the worked one hour on scope and the next hour off or went to another position.

This is the first room in the Blue Zoo. It was called this because all rooms with the exception of manual inputs were illuminated with dim blue lights. The zoo part was what appeared to be the confusion in the room. There was little confusion except during exercises. The noises was the communications between individuals and the constant ringing of telephones.

Upon entering the room was a serise of scopes to the left of the door. These were the Overlap Telling scopes. Normally the AN/FSQ-7 computer would begin telling the track to adjacent sectors (later called regions). All tracks were told when they enterred a zone fifteen miles from the border and were told until fifteen miles inside the new sector or accepted by the new sector. The operators on these scopes had the responsibility of accepting these tracks. This postion was only manned during exercises or periods of increased readiness. The Tracking Supervisor assumed  these duties during day to day operations.

In front of these scopes were two teams of 12 scopes and one team of 6 scopes. These were the tracking teams. Team one and two consisted of one Tracking Supervisor (TS) , one Track Monitor Special (TMS) and ten Track Monitors. The Areas of responsibility were assigned by the TS to the TMs. The TMS was responsibile for re-establishing tracks on lost status. Team three was composed of one TS and 5 TMs.

To the right of the Tracking Teams was the Height Section. It was had the Height Supervisor's (HS) Scope and the Consoles for Height Technician (HT) one and two. The HS was responsibile for obtsining height and flight size (number of aircraft) information on all aircraft. In the semi automatic mode height finding mode (SAHF) the AN/FSQ-7 generated height reauests on all tracks on a priority basis. The priorities hostile/faker, unknown/pending, special, yoke, bee then friendly class tracks. Height Technician 1 (HT-1) has all the same actions as, and cam assist the HS. HT-1 and HT-2 also provide height request information to the Long Range Radar Site (LRR) and switch insert height and flight size information. When in the manual height mode voice communication via telephone is used to augment the system when necessary. This is usually done for aircraft which have declared emergency, jamming aircraft or when data transmissions problems to the LRR have occured.

At the far end of the room is a raised dias. This is the location of the Air Surveillance Officer/Technician (ASO/AST), Tracking Officer/Technician (TO/TT) and the Radar Inputs Counter Measures Officer/Technician (RICMO/RICMT). The ASO/AST is responsibile to the Senior Director (SD) for the operation of the Surveillance Section. He also, with coordination with the RICMO/RICMT, controls the search radar and IFF/SIF inputs. The TO/TT is reaponsibile to the ASO/AST for the function of the three TSs and their TMs. The RICMO/RICMT coordinates with the Anti-Jamming Operators at the LRRs, the AN/FSQ-7 data reduction personnel and the ASO/AST to take the necessary actions required to minimize the effects of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) otherwise known as jamming on the system. The RICMO/RICMT also has the authority to turn the Threshold Control Units at the LRR and inititate passive tracking on Tracking Team 2.

Passive Tracking is the triangulation of jamming tracks by using the strobes produced by the jammer against several LRRs.