Editing PAVE PAWS (section)

== Mission ==
[[File:PAVE PAWS Radar Clear AFS Alaska.jpg|thumb|PAVE PAWS transmitter building, Clear Space Force Station, Alaska, showing the two circular phased array antennas]]
[[File:Cape Cod Air Station - HAER MA-151-A - 384568pu.jpg|thumb|Some of the 2,677 crossed-dipole elements in the phased array antenna]]

The radar was built in the Cold War to give early warning of a [[nuclear attack]], to allow time for US bombers to get off the ground and land-based US missiles to be launched, to decrease the chance that a [[preemptive strike]] could destroy US strategic nuclear forces.  The deployment of [[submarine launched ballistic missile]]s (SLBMs) by the Soviet Union by the 1970s, significantly decreased the warning time available between the detection of an incoming enemy missile and its reaching its target, because SLBMs can be launched closer to the US than the previous [[intercontinental ballistic missile|ICBMs]], which have a long flight path from the Soviet Union to the continental US.  Thus there was a need for a radar system with faster reaction time than existing radars. PAVE PAWS later acquired a second mission of tracking satellites and other objects in Earth orbit as part of the [[United States Space Surveillance Network]].

A notable feature of the system is its [[phased array]] antenna technology, it was one of the first large phased array radars.  A phased array was used because a conventional mechanically-rotated radar antenna cannot turn fast enough to track multiple ballistic missiles.<ref name="GlobalSecurity">{{cite web |url=http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/pavepaws.htm |title=AN/FPS-115 PAVE PAWS Radar |work=Space Systems |publisher=GlobalSecurity.org |date=2016 |access-date=4 January 2017}}</ref> A [[Nuclear warfare|nuclear strike]] on the US would consist of hundreds of [[intercontinental ballistic missile|ICBMs]] and [[submarine launched ballistic missile|SLBMs]] incoming simultaneously. The beam of the phased array radar is steered electronically without moving the fixed antenna, so it can be pointed in a different direction in milliseconds, allowing it to track many incoming missiles at the same time.