Caribou Air Force Station
Caribou Air Force Station, also known as North River Depot and East Loring, is a defunct Air Force Station that operated from 1951 until some time when it was absorbed into Loring Air Force Base in 1962. It was located in Limestone, Maine, adjacent to Loring. Between 1951 and 1962 Caribou was an Operational Storage Site for Air Materiel Command (AMC-OSS), one of five in the United States, and the weapons storage and maintenance facility for Loring alert aircraft.
Tethered Aerostat Radar System
The first aerostats were assigned to the United States Air Force in December 1980 at Cudjoe Key, Fla. During the 1980s, the U.S. Customs Service operated a network of aerostats to help counter illegal drug trafficking. Their first site was built at High Rock, Grand Bahamas Island, in 1984. The second site was built at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., in 1986. Before 1992, three agencies operated the TARS network: the Air Force, U.S. Customs Service and U.S. Coast Guard. Congress in 1992 transferred management of the system to the Defense Department, with the Air Force as executive agent. Under Air Force management, through contract consolidation and system standardization, the operations and maintenance cost per site was reduced from $6 million in fiscal year 1992 to $3.5 million in 2007. However the Budget Control Act of 2011 slashed funding for the Air Force, which tried to shut down the project. However, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) assumed responsibility the Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS) project and its funding since fiscal year 2014.