Nike Missile Site WA-10 Launcher, Roswell New Mexico
Longitude: -104.347657665355
This location was part of the Walker AFB Defense Area
Site ID: WA-10
The missiles at this Launch Area were controlled by the Integrated Fire Control site located here.
Site Role: Launcher
A typical Nike air defense site consisted of two separate parcels of land. One area was known as the Integrated Fire Control (IFC) Area. This site contained the Nike system's ground-based radar and computer systems designed to detect and track hostile aircraft, and to guide the missiles to their targets.
The second parcel of land was known as the Launcher Area. At the launcher area, Nike missiles were stored horizontally within heavily constructed underground missile magazines. A large, missile elevator brought the Nikes to the surface of the site where they would be pushed across twin steel rails to one of four satellite launchers.
Elaboration on how Nike worked here.
Current site status: unknown
Nike WA-10's IFC was never operational and never activated. It was located near Roswell in the Walker AFB Defense Area.
One site was located six miles east of Roswell on Comanche Hill (WA-10), with a second site situated seventeen miles south of Roswell (WA-50). After extended Army, Congressional, and public debate, both Nike sites, then more than 98 percent complete, were deactivated shortly before their initial operational date of July 1960. Army officials, in a change of defense strategy, moved the bases to eight metropolitan areas within the United States.
The Walker Defense Area was highly unusual. The sites were selected and built, the battalion activated, batteries were assigned, and then the whole setup was shut down. Many of the personnel were later transferred to the Omaha Defense Area. Air Force units at Walker AFB during this period were the 6th Bombardment Wing and the 58th Fighter Interceptor Squadron.
The companion site WA-50 was located approximately 17 miles south of Roswell. Like WA-10, it was never operational and was abandoned at nearly 98% construction completion, making the Walker Defense Area one of the most dramatic cases of a Nike program cancellation in U.S. history, with two nearly finished bases simply walked away from.
List of all Nike Installations in New Mexico