During the early years of the Cold War, NATO developed an impressive system of long-distance military communications.<\/p>\n
The purpose of this communications network was to improve the Alliance's early warning capabilities<\/strong> in the event of a possible attack. The system began to be developed in 1956 and was known as Allied Command Europe Highband (ACE High)<\/strong>. At that time, communications satellites did not yet exist, so a UHF tropospheric scatter system was chosen for this network, capable of emitting signals that could be picked up beyond the horizon.<\/p>\n The system became operational in 1964.<\/strong> Dozens of communication stations were built in Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. One of the communication stations was GKFZ Kefallonia on the island of Kefalonia,<\/strong> part of the Ionian Islands archipelago in western Greece. The base was set up at an altitude of over 1,000 metres above sea level<\/strong>, on the north-western side of Mount Ainos.<\/p>\n The GKFZ Kefallonia base was under the control of the Hellenic Air Force and was active until 1995<\/strong>, after the fall of the Berlin Wall (the ACE High system was deactivated a year later). The base was ceded by the Hellenic Air Force in 1998 for the creation of the<\/strong> Eudoxos Astronomical Observatory<\/a>, the first robotic astronomy centre in Greece, opened in 1999. Unfortunately, the economic crisis of 2007 led to the observatory being abandoned a few years later.<\/p>\n
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