page_title: Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
section_title: Deployment
hierarchical_section_title: Semi-Automatic Ground Environment / Deployment
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of SAGE Combat Center CC-01 at Hancock Field, NY
context_page_description: The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s. Its enormous computers and huge displays remain a part of cold war lore, and a common prop in movies such as Dr. Strangelove and Colossus.
  The processing power behind SAGE was supplied by the largest discrete component-based computer ever built, the IBM-manufactured AN/FSQ-7. Each SAGE Direction Center housed an FSQ-7 which occupied an entire floor, approximately 22,000 square feet not including supporting equipment. Information was fed to the DCs from a network of radar stations as well as readiness information from various defence sites. The computers, based on the raw radar data, developed "tracks" for the reported targets, and automatically calculated which defences were within range.
context_section_description: In 1957, SAGE System groundbreaking at McChord AFB was for DC-12 where the "electronic brain" began arriving in November 1958, and the "first SAGE regional battle post [CC-01] began operating in Syracuse, New York in early 1959".  BOMARC "crew training was activated January 1, 1958", and AT&T "hardened many of its switching centers, putting them in deep underground bunkers",  The North American Defense Objectives Plan (NADOP 59-63) submitted to Canada in December 1958 scheduled 5 Direction Centers and 1 Combat Center to be complete in Fiscal Year 1959, 12 DCs and 3 CCs complete at the end of FY 60, 19 DC/4 CC FY 61, 25/6 FY 62, and 30/10 FY 63.  On June 30 NORAD ordered that "Air Defense Sectors (SAGE) were to be designated as NORAD sectors", (the military reorganization had begun when effective April 1, 1958, CONAD "designated four SAGE sectors – New York, Boston, Syracuse, and Washington – as CONAD Sectors".)
  SAGE Geographic Reorganization: The SAGE Geographic Reorganization Plan of July 25, 1958, by NORAD was "to provide a means for the orderly transition and phasing from the manual to the SAGE system."  The plan identified deactivation of the Eastern, Central, and Western Region/Defense Forces on July 1, 1960, and "current manual boundaries" were to be moved to the new "eight SAGE divisions" (1 in Canada, "the 35th") as soon as possible.  Manual divisions "not to get SAGE computers were to be phased out" along with their Manual Air Defense Control Centers at the headquarters base: "9th [at] Geiger Field… 32d, Syracuse AFS… 35th, Dobbins AFB… 58th, Wright-Patterson AFB… 85th, Andrews AFB".  The 26th SAGE Division (New York, Boston, Syracuse & Bangor SAGE sectors)--the 1st of the SAGE divisions—became operational at Hancock Field on 1 January 1959 after the redesignation started for AC&W Squadrons (e.g., the Highlands P-9 unit became the 646th Radar Squadron (SAGE) October 1.)  Additional sectors included the Los Angeles Air Defense Sector (SAGE) designated in February 1959.  A June 23 JCS memorandum approved the new "March 1959 Reorganization Plan" for HQ NORAD/CONAD/ADC.
  Project Wild Goose teams of Air Material Command personnel installed c. 1960 the Ground Air Transmit Receive stations for the SAGE TDDL (in April 1961, Sault Ste Marie was the first operational sector with TDDL.) ... By the middle of 1960, AMC had determined that about 800,000 man-hours (involving 130 changes) would be required to bring the F-106 fleet to the point where it would be a valuable adjunct to the air defense system. Part of the work (Project Broad Jump) was accomplished by Sacramento Air Materiel Area. The remainder (Project Wild Goose) was done at ADC bases by roving AMC field assistance teams supported by ADC maintenance personnel. (cited by Volume I p. 271 & Schaffel p. 325)  After a September 1959 experimental ATABE test between an "abbreviated" AN/FSQ-7 staged at Fort Banks and the Lexington XD-1, the 1961 "SAGE/Missile Master test program" conducted large-scale field testing of the ATABE "mathematical model" using radar tracks of actual SAC and ADC aircraft flying mock penetrations into defense sectors.  Similarly conducted was the joint SAC-NORAD Sky Shield II exercise followed by Sky Shield III on 2 September 1962  On July 15, 1963, ESD's CMC Management Office assumed "responsibilities in connection with BMEWS, Space Track, SAGE, and BUIC."  The Chidlaw Building's computerized NORAD/ADC Combined Operations Center in 1963 became the highest echelon of the SAGE computer network when operations moved from Ent AFB's 1954 manual Command Center to the partially underground "war room".  Also in 1963, radar stations were renumbered (e.g., Cambria AFS was redesignated from P-2 to Z-2 on July 31) and the vacuum-tube SAGE System was completed (and obsolete).
  On "June 26, 1958,…the New York sector became operational" and on December 1, 1958, the Syracuse sector's DC-03 was operational ("the SAGE system  [did not] become operational until January 1959.") Construction of CFB North Bay in Canada was started in 1959 for a bunker ~700 feet (210 m)
caption: Subsector Command Post of SAGE Combat Center at Syracuse Air Force Station with consoles and large display, which was projected from above. Archive photo taken during equipment installation.
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