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A powerful radar located at Juneau's Lena Point helped the Missile Defense Agency intercept a test missile fired from the state's Kodiak Launch Complex on Friday, and hit it with a "kill vehicle" shot from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

That likely concludes Juneau's role in helping develop a missile defense shield for the country, said Ralph Scott, spokesman for the agency.

It also is not the first time Juneau played a role in tests of defending the nation. The evidence of tests from more than half a century ago is still visible, historians say.

The temporary radar facility in Juneau used a transportable AN/TPY-2 radar to track the Kodiak-launched missile, providing data which was integrated with information from a U.S. Navy Aegis warship and other installations to provide targeting information.

A fire control center at Alaska's Fort Greely remotely launched the interceptor from Vandenberg, which successfully intercepted the missile, Scott said.

"This test demonstrated that the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system can defeat a long-range ballistic missile target," said Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, in a press release.

The Juneau test facility, which has had as many as 45 workers and technicians working on the site at various times over the last several months, will now be dismantled. At public meetings with Point Lena neighbors, Missile Defense Agency representatives said the radar may be shipped to Europe for use in missile defense efforts there.

More than 50 years ago, Juneau also played a similar role.

In the early years of the Cold War, and with the country fearful of a communist attack across the Arctic from the then-Soviet Union, a way was sought to shield the nation from bombers, local historian Al Shaw said.

Radar stations strung along the United States, Canadian Arctic and Greenland could provide the warning the Air Force needed, but it wasn't clear that the communications technology of the day could relay that information to where it was needed.

Radio operators though, knew that sometimes their signals skipped off the troposphere, a layer in the atmosphere, and went much further than expected. That might be able to link the stations of what was to become the Distant Early Warning line with the rest of the country.

"They knew the concept was possible, but no one had ever really tried to do it," Shaw said.

AT&T's Western Electric subsidiary built radio transmitters to test the concept. In Juneau, they constructed big radio towers. They operated for only a few weeks, confirming the viability of the method and possible testing frequencies or other variables, Shaw said.

"The present missile system at Lena Point is a different thing, but it grows out of the same effort," Shaw said.

All that remains now of the towers is the massive bases, straddling Vanderbilt Hill Road near the Juneau Pioneers' Home and visible from the road and Egan Drive.

Shaw was away from Juneau in the Army when the towers were constructed, but thinks it was around 1951 or 1952.

The towers were only used a few weeks, long enough to confirm the strategy would work, and they were then dismantled.

A small building that remains just off the road was used to run the tests, he said.

Local residents didn't known what went on inside, but Shaw assumes they were testing and calibrating the system.

"Undoubtedly the people in the building were playing with the dials," he said.

Shaw wrote about his research in the November 2007 issue of Gastineau Heritage News, a publication of the Gastineau Channel Historical Society.

MDA officials say that most of the evidence of the 2008 radar tests will soon disappear, though the Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute at Lena Point will retain some of the improvements, as well as upgrades to an electrical substation there.

The DEW line that Juneau helped test never faced a Soviet attack, but some historians think its greatest success is the confidence it gave American leaders. Knowing for sure the country was not under attack may have helped prevent an accidental war.

Fancher, in a Boeing press release, touted the value of the work his company was doing.

"This intercept is further proof that GMD can provide our nation with an effective defense against the threat of long-range ballistic missiles," he said.

• Contact reporter Pat Forgey at 523-2250 or patrick.forgey@juneauempire.com.