The FLORIDA system included three main components:
Radar systems The four elevated rotating radar antennas each consisted of a primary radar, and a
secondary radar mounted over the primary radar. They could be fully retracted into the mountain peak which was automatically closed with a massive door. The sites were equipped with
anti-aircraft artillery in rotatable domes for self-defense.
Operational centers Several wartime operational centers were located in mountain caverns. The operations center for peacetime use was sited at
Dübendorf, adjacent to the surveillance squadron building. It is now used by the civilian
Skyguide as a test center. The consoles were equipped with a
trackball and allowed to edit each radar track quickly, when the system could not identify it. Each console had several displays showing the best interception path (the path was shown in several numbers who stood for height, speed,..) for the allocated intercept aircraft flying under the control of the tactical fighter controller (TFC) on this console. The TFC transmit by radio to the Aircraft by using the
Bambini-Code (used in
World War II by the
Swiss Air Force-developed tactical code). Each operations center was equipped with a large status board which indicated the most important information of all the military airfields.
Computing center The computer center consists primarily of the computing system with the corresponding peripheral devices (magnet tape, printer, punch cards and paper tape) and interface devices (interfaces) for communication with the local (on-screen consoles, status board, etc.) and external subsystems (redundant computing centers, radar stations,
Bl-64 positions, direction finders, eg.). The computer can process data from up to 400 aircraft simultaneously. ==Tasks ==