The 164th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Fighter Control) (164th AAFBU) was assigned to the station on 10 April 1944.

The mission of the 164th AAFBU was detection, interception, identification, and if necessary, destruction of all aircraft in the greater New York Metropolitan area.

Unknown aircraft would be targeted for interception, and destruction if necessary, by interceptors operating out of nearby military airfields such as Mitchel Field, or by other active defense systems, such as anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), barrage balloons, and smoke generated equipment situated around nearby defense plants and military installations.

The Roslyn Filter Center operated until the end of the war and was then declared surplus to the needs of the Air Defense Command.

On 1 January 1951 ADC assigned the 503d Aircraft Control and Warning Group to Roslyn with the mission of developing a general radar surveillance system for the New York area.

The 26th AD commanded the Manual Air-Defense Control Center (ADCC) established by the predecessor ADC organizations coordinating air defense over an area that covered much of the industrial northeast, including New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C..

It employed off shore naval picket ships, fixed "Texas Tower" radar sites, airborne early warning units, and a civilian ground observer corps program.