The station operated as a joint Army-Air Force facility, an unusual arrangement born of necessity. The Air Force's 635th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron ran search and height-finder radars alongside Army controllers who managed Nike missile command-and-control from the same hilltop. An FAA ARSR-1C search radar swept the horizon while two Air Force AN/FPS-6A height-finder radars pinpointed aircraft altitude. The Army maintained its own pair of height-finders as well. Together, these systems fed data to the Semi Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, a pioneering computer network that processed radar returns from stations across the region at a direction center at McChord Air Force Base. The radar squadron provided information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, analyzing every blip to determine whether approaching aircraft were friendly or hostile.

Fort Lawton's tenure as an active Air Force station lasted barely three years. By late 1962, an AN/FPS-26 height-finder radar had been installed, but the Air Force was already pulling back. On December 31, 1962, the 635th Radar Squadron transferred to Dauphin Island in Alabama, though a small detachment lingered at Fort Lawton until March 1963. The Army kept its air defense command post running for another decade, operating the BIRDIE solid-state computer system that had replaced the older Missile-Master Nike direction center. Units rotated through: the 26th Artillery Group, the 49th Artillery Group, battalions of the 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment. When the Army finally inactivated its command post on September 1, 1974, the station's military chapter closed for good.

Walk through Discovery Park today, past the old fort's historic buildings and through the meadows overlooking Puget Sound, and you might notice something unexpected: a radar installation still operating on the bluff. The FAA never left. The agency's search radar, now an upgraded ARSR-1E, continues to track aircraft as part of the Joint Surveillance System, a partnership between the FAA and the military that monitors North American airspace. In a neighborhood known for its walking trails and views of the Olympic Mountains, this quiet installation is a working relic of the Cold War defense network. Most of the joggers and dog walkers passing nearby have no idea that the dish above them is still doing exactly what it was built to do more than six decades ago.