On July 22, 1955, the military site was acquired and in 1955, "an operations building for a high-power longrange radar facility was completed." Funding for the site was "from a special Air Force appropriation" and Rome Air Development Center was responsible for installation and operation of the site, which became operational in 1956. By 1958, the XW-2 model of an AN/FPS-17 was at the station and on the October 11, 1958 mission 164 to track the satellite of the Sputnik III launch, tracked at height an unidentified "radar target was picked up on a ground radar at the Laredo Test Site at at a range of 454 nautical miles and at 462 nautical miles at a height of 64 nautical miles. The lasted for a total of 28 seconds" After a January 1959 plan included the "ARDC Laredo test site radars" as sensors for the "interim National Space Surveillance and Control Center", in 1960 the "Laredo test site assumed the function of tracking artificial satellites and reporting the data to Project "Harvest Moon". In July 1961 Air Defense Command acquired the site and by the end of 1961, the station had been developed with structures like ADC Permanent System radar stations Buildings included barracks, an orderly room building, etc. 1961 test sites at Trinidad and Laredo transferred from RADC on July 1. By 1962, an AN/FPS-78 was at the Laredo Test Site, and it was used during the Cuban Missile Crisis to sweep over the trajectory area from Cuba after the sweep by an Alabama radar and before a New Jersey radar.
Laredo sensor site
The Laredo Sensor Site was the station's name by August 30, 1961; and operations included projecting "an enlarged image of radar scope film a finely graduated scale on screen" for tracking precision. "The Laredo sensor was deactivated on 15 July 1964" and the "Air Force...reactivated it on 1 April 1966" Detachment 8 of the 14th Missile Warning Squadron was established in the late 1960s at Laredo AFS. The AN/FSS-7 mission of detecting SLBM launches/Space Surveillance and Satellite Tracking from Texas was taken over by a PAVE PAWS at Eldorado Air Force Station in 1987.
Army Reserve and civilian prison
On May 22, 1974, the station transferred to the Army and was used "for weekend training by local Army Reserve components" until deactivated in 1980. The station including "firing range, small theater, library, cafeteria, officers club, NCO club, airman's club" --except for a small area of licensed land—transferred to the Webb County government on October 16, 1980; which by May 1992 had "converted the site into a prison" and storage area for vehicles seized by the U.S. Marshal Service.
