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.It would provide earlier, but less precise, warning ofmissile attack than the radar-based BMEWS.64 Ground stations were planned in Alaska,Greenland and the UK, each about 150 miles from the respective BMEWS sites andutilising common communications links to NORAD.65 Ballistic missile early warning 87The initial British reaction was that the system was of little direct military benefit, asthe threat to the UK was from shorter-range, cooler IRBMs, but that by reducing thechances of the West in general being taken by surprise, the retaliatory policy wasenhanced.A station in the UK would be funded by the United States and, unlikeBMEWS, manned by Americans as well.Other than providing land, no Britishcontribution was initially being asked for.The Air Ministry made a detailed study of the relative characteristics and performanceof BMEWS, MIDAS and HF systems such as Zinnia and Chaplain.66 It raised thepossibility of not spending any money on a contribution to BMEWS if MIDAS warningcould be obtained at no cost.However, BMEWS, given the tracking capability which theothers lacked, was clearly the primary means of early warning.The other systems werecomplementary to BMEWS but could not supplant it.The study also observed that thepositioning of assets in space might have international repercussions, going so far as tosuggest they might be used by the United Nations for monitoring aggressive ballisticmissile action by any nation.It also, without any explanation, stated that MIDAS mightnever come into being for various reasons and the HF systems are doubtful starters ,which, whatever its foundation, showed some foresight.The other two MIDAS stationswere scheduled to be operating in 1961, and the UK station in January 1963.The proposed station would comprise three 60-foot dish aerial receivers in radomesplus support buildings in an area of low radio noise.It would have looked like a smallerversion of the BMEWS site at Fylingdales.The US Air Force had identified a suitablesite, currently surplus to requirements, at RAF Kirkbride near Carlisle.67The United States also approached the government of Southern Rhodesia (present-dayZimbabwe) with a view to establishing an additional ground station there.The Chief ofthe Air Staff (CAS) of the Royal Rhodesian Air Force sought British views on thescientific and military basis of the system, and whether it could monitor aircraftmovements.His concerns were assuaged, and he was told of the similar request for astation in the UK, which had not yet been approved.68The ability of MIDAS to detect the shorter-range missiles that would in future be themain threat to the UK became bound up with the whole credibility of the V-bomberforce.A top secret Air Ministry internal paper stated that with BMEWS and MIDASwarning combined (assuming the latter could detect MRBMs), enough bombers could getairborne to accomplish 36 per cent of their approved task of destroying 50 per cent of 40major Soviet cities.Without MIDAS, the figure of 36 per cent dropped to 1 per cent inother words the UK had no credible deterrent.Advocates of a submarine-based deterrent(presumably the Admiralty) might argue that without MIDAS the validity of the deterrentrested on the Russians making a simultaneous attack on the United States, in which casethe 20 minutes-plus warning available would enable the V-bombers to get airborne.MIDAS, even if only able to detect ICBMs, would therefore add to that warning and so tothe credibility of the UK deterrent.It was being argued that a possible financialcontribution to MIDAS now being mooted should not be made until it gained an anti-MRBM capability.In addressing this issue, the Air Staff admitted (if only to themselves)that the existing deterrent was not credible unless the United States was attacked at thesame time.69The Americans were now proposing that the UK contribute to the costs of MIDAS inexchange for access to the information provided, following the Fylingdales precedent
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