6: Riverhead / Suffolk, Long Island, NY (Z-315/J-52). This present-day FAA joint-use radar site, now operating an ARSR 4 radar, was originally the location of the Ground-Air Transmitter (GAT) facility for the BOMARC Interceptor Missile launch facility assigned to Suffolk County AFB, LI, NY. A BOMARC GAT facility was similar to a SAGE radar-site or direction-center GATR facility, except that the GAT site only transmitted digital data, and had no voice radios. Specifically, a GAT site transmitted digital intercept data from a Region SAGE Direction Center to a given BOMARC “A”-model missile after launch using the AN/GKA-4 Frequency-Division Data Link (FDDL) data transmitter. When the “B”-model BOMARC missiles were fielded, they were equipped with Time-Division Data Link (TDDL) receivers, the same as for ADC Fighter-Interceptor aircraft.

TDDL data were transmitted by AN/GKA-5 equipment at the BOMARC Missile launch site itself (loaded into a missile via cable right before a launch) and (after launch) by AN/GKA-5 equipment at standard GATR Sites (via radio signals). After the “B”-model BOMARC missiles were fielded, the GAT facilities (five total) then were all closed down. Those GAT sites were, in addition to the Suffolk County AFB BOMARC facility, the ones for Dow AFB, ME; Otis AFB, MA; McGuire AFB, NJ; and Langley AFB, VA. Only the Suffolk County building is no longer extant today.