Air Defense Direction Center

Air Defense Direction Center
NORAD sector direction center (NSDC)
command, control, and coordination military installation
Several Air Defense Direction Centers were located within SAGE "cube" blockhouses. This is the SAGE ADDC at McGuire AFB, New Jersey, circa 1958.
Country	United States

An Air Defense Direction Center (ADDC) 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 ("weapons assignment"). As with the World War II Aircraft Warning Service CONUS defense network, a "manual air defense system" was used through the 1950s (e.g., NORAD/ADC used a "Plexiglass [sic] plotting board" at the Ent command center.) 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:

Most ADDCs were replaced by Regional Operations Control Centers of the Joint Surveillance System (FOC on December 23, 1980).