The Cold War, ongoing for over three decades by the 1980s, faced a new threat from low-level cruise missiles that could evade conventional radar. In response, the Christmas Valley Air Force Station was built to house a "backscatter" radar system. This technology used the ionosphere as a mirror to detect targets beyond the horizon. The installation at Christmas Valley served as the transmitter array, featuring three large, square-mile transmitter stations enclosed by wooden fences. Construction was completed in the late 1980s, just as the Cold War began to end. Consequently, the array was never used for its intended military purpose. The facility was briefly used in the 1990s for tracking drug smugglers and for NOAA research. It was decommissioned in 1997 and fully deactivated in 2002, though the wooden fences remained. The site was transferred to Oregon, with proposals for green energy generation utilizing its existing electrical infrastructure. Currently, a small backscatter antenna array, operated by Dartmouth University, is used for upper atmosphere research. Ironically, in 2025, the Air Force proposed rebuilding a backscatter radar at the site, suggesting a resurgence of previous geopolitical concerns.