Cobra Mist

1km
0.6miles

N

O

R

T

H

S

E

A

Jetty

'Pagodas'

Orford Ness
National Nature
Reserve

Orfordness Beacon

transmitting
station

Havergate
Island (RSPB)

Cobra Mist

R i v e r A l d e

R i v e r O r e

Lighthouse

Castle

🌍

Orford Ness, Suffolk, showing locations of main sites.

Cobra Mist was the codename for an Anglo-American experimental over-the-horizon radar station at Orford Ness, England. It was known technically as AN/FPS-95 and sometimes referred to as System 441a; a reference to the project as a whole.

Cobra Mist was part of a small number of "Cobra" long-range surveillance radars operated by the United States. It was originally intended to be located in Turkey and to offer coverage of most of European Soviet airspace. When Turkey objected to the installation, it was built in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s and into 1970 to offer a view of most of Eastern Europe. When the system was first turned on it had noise problems that could not be identified, and the project was shut down in 1973.

The site and buildings were then occupied by a radio transmitting station used mainly for the UK Foreign Office and the BBC World Service until 2011.