RLOB Description: General Statement

(Excerpt from Historic American Engineering Record, HAER No.

ND-9-V, Remote Launch Operations Building, Remote Sprint Launch Site #1, Building 1110
ND-9-Z, Remote Launch Operations Building, Remote Sprint Launch Site #2, Building 2110
ND-9-AD, Remote Launch Operations Building, Remote Sprint Launch Site #3, Building 3110
ND-9-AH, Remote Launch Operations Building, Remote Sprint Launch Site #4, Building 4110)

Part II. Architectural Information

A. General Statement

The RLOB's are earth covered, steel reinforced concrete buildings with 36 rooms. They contained the equipment and facilities to support Sprint missile operation and house personnel working at each RSL. The RLOB's were the nerve center of each remote launch site. Communications would be maintained between the RLOB's and the MSR to allow firing of the missiles against incoming missiles.

Though the hardened building provided protection against potential shock spectra and blast loads, the RLOB's required shielding to ensure that they would also withstand the secondary effects of nuclear attack. This shielding could protect occupants and equipment from nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP), radio frequency interference (RFI), radiation overpressure, ground shock, thermal radiation, and dust.

At each RSL site, EMP/RFI hardened areas include the Sprint launch stations (except the mechanical and electrical equipment vaults which were only EMP hardened). The RLOB rooms were shielded as required.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided data indicating which rooms were shielded at all four RSL sites. These rooms included the Communications Equipment room (101); cable vault room (102); crypto room (103); cable vault room (105); the Sprint Remote Control Equipment (SRCE) room (108); and the battery room (125).

Design of the RSL sites was considered much simpler, less pressing, and less expensive than that of the other predominant SRMSC tactical facilities, and, unlike them, the RSL history is almost exclusively associated with Safeguard and not with the earlier Sentinel system. The RLOB's, except for their entry tunnels, are identical.

1. Architectural Character:

The RLOB merits recording by reason of its steel-reinforced, liner-plate shielded design which protected it against nuclear weapon effects, role in early ballistic missile defenses, and role as a pivotal figure at SRMSC (the only antiballistic site ever completed in the United States).

2. Condition:

The RLOB facilities are considerably deteriorated.