Air Defense Direction Center
An Air Defense Direction Center was a type of United States command post for assessing Cold War radar tracks, assigning height requests to available height-finder radars, and for "Weapons Direction": coordinating command guidance of aircraft from more than 1 site for ground-controlled interception. As with the World War II Aircraft Warning Service CONUS defense network, a "manual air defense system" was used through the 1950s Along with 182 radar stations at "the end of 1957, ADC operated … 17 control centers", and the Ground Observation Corps was TBD on TBD. With the formation of NORAD, several types of ADDCs were planned by Air Defense Command:
- Joint Direction Center, a USAF ADDC collocated with an Army Air Defense Command Post, AADCP.
- *Alaskan Joint Direction Center, at 2 sites: Fire Island and Murphy Dome Air Force Station for the Alaskan Air Command Semi-Automatic Defense System
- Semi-Automatic Direction Center, an ADCC with a command, control, and coordination system that provided the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, e.g., AN/FSQ-7 or AN/GSA-51
- *Combined Direction-Combat Center, a USAF ADDC collocated with a SAGE Combat Center
- *SCC Direction Center, a USAF ADDC to be collocated with a planned Super Combat Center in a nuclear bunker
- Manual Direction Center, an ADCC without a SAGE CCCS, successors to the Manual Air Defense Control Centers of the Permanent System
- NIKE direction center, Army Project Nike AADCPs for coordinating surface-to-air missile fire from multiple batteries, e.g., W-13DC through LA-45DC, 9 of which were within Missile Master nuclear bunkers.