The United States began construction of a Distant Early Warning Line, to detect a possible Soviet attack via radar. There was a tremendous sense of urgency due to the likely outbreak of hostilities at any moment. A network of radars was thus built, continuously covering 25,000 kilometers of Arctic territory beyond the Arctic Circle, from Alaska to Greenland through Canada. The network was then seamlessly extended to Midway on one side and Scotland on the other. All this would pave the way for the creation of NORAD in 1957.
