A study being done by the military suggests scaling back the
Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, a symbol of the Cold War and the
nation’s most heavily fortified military station.
The analysis of the 40-year-old center, which was
carved deep into the rock of Cheyenne Mountain and was designed to be a
command post in the event of nuclear war, was commissioned in February
by Adm. Timothy Keating, chief of the North American Aerospace Defense
Command and the U.S. Northern Command, based at Peterson Air Force Base.
The Cheyenne Mountain center monitors the skies, oceans and space for
threats. A dramatic curtailment of its missions has never been seriously
considered, said John Pike, executive director of the defense think
tank GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va. Pike has analyzed defense
issues for 25 years. The Cheyenne Mountain base was built amid the Cold
War when the United States feared a Soviet nuclear attack. Pike said
today’s foes don’t pose the same threat. “Whatever the attack is, it’s
not going to be a disarming first strike,” he said, adding that Cheyenne
Mountain “was created to solve a problem that mercifully we no longer
have.” In a statement, NORADNorthCom Public Affairs Director Michael
Perini said the $100,000 study, originally slated for a June release,
has been delayed by at least a month. Perini denied that the study,
being conducted by the NORAD and NorthCom operations directorate, would
result in closing the mountain base. “There is no talk at this point of
dismantling any portion of the command center at Cheyenne Mountain,”
Perini’s statement said. But it said the center could be placed on “warm
standby” status, a term to be defined by the study. A former senior
government official familiar with the study said “warm standby” in this
case means maintaining the center but fully staffing it only when
needed. The former official, who asked not to be named for fear of
damaging his continuing relations with the military, said the study
suggests moving 150 people, about a third of the Cheyenne Mountain
workforce, to Peterson to achieve “substantial savings.” It doesn’t make
sense to have two crews flanking Colorado Springs doing the same jobs,
the former official said. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said that if the
study proposes changing the base’s operations, he’ll want to know
whether redundancy exists elsewhere, whether security at those sites
matches the mountain’s and what, if any, cost savings would result. “If
there’s a savings, we ought to take a look at it,” he said. A
congressional source who didn’t want to be identified because he is not
authorized to speak publicly, said the idea of curtailing Cheyenne
Mountain’s operations has circulated at the Pentagon for months due to
concerns about operating costs. All service branches are being squeezed
to defray the costs of the Iraq war. A detailed account of the study’s
findings, provided anonymously to The Gazette, outlines plans to move
Cheyenne Mountain’s missile defense and air defense missions to
Peterson, missile warning to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, home of
Strategic Command, and the space mission to Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California. Air Force Space Command said in a statement that “plans are
currently being developed to move the 1st Space Control Squadron to
Vandenberg AFB to co-locate with the Joint Space Operations Center
there.” It also said moving the five 11-person crews that comprise the
squadron from Cheyenne Mountain would “evolve and improve their current
capabilities” in tracking more than 8,500 man-made objects orbiting
Earth. “At this time, however, it is uncertain when that move will take
place or what the costs will be,” Space Command said, adding that the
relocation study, separate from NORAD’s study, isn’t completed. The
congressional source said the Pentagon “has done a terrible job”
monitoring a 15-year, $1.5 billion modernization program at Cheyenne
Mountain, leading the House to cut a $51 million request for project
funding to $14 million in 2007. Cheyenne Mountain’s command center was
revamped at a cost of $13 million in 2003 and 2004. The study is rooted
in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former government official
said. That day, Gen. Ralph “Ed” Eberhart, who at the time was chief of
NORAD and U.S. Space Command, spent 45 minutes getting from Peterson to
Cheyenne Mountain, which had communications capabilities not available
at Peterson. Enroute, he lost a cellphone call with Vice President Dick
Cheney, underscoring the fact that Eberhart, now retired, wasn’t at his
battle station inside the mountain. A short time later, the order was
given to shoot down a hijacked airliner, five minutes after the plane
plunged into a Pennsylvania field. New repeater stations were installed
almost immediately to fix the phone problem, and Congress began pumping
money into Peterson. A Peterson building under construction for U.S.
Space Command was expanded to accommodate a NORAD operations center that
has since become a joint facility shared with Northern Command, the new
homeland defense arm created in late 2002. U.S. Space Command became
part of Strategic Command. The $51 million expansion project put under
one roof NORAD and NorthCom operations that were scattered in several
Peterson buildings. Another $1.5 million was recently spent to install a
perimeter of pylons, steel cable, boulders and berms around the
buildings, which lie within a few hundred feet of unsecured off-base
roads and buildings. The congressional source said Peterson officials
“have serious concern” about NORAD/NorthCom’s headquarters’ proximity to
the base’s edge and want to buy property to create a buffer zone.
Peterson also lies in the path of dozens of daily flights to and from
the Colorado Springs Airport. Pike, the defense analyst, said there were
alternatives to Cheyenne Mountain. “Rather than making it survivable
under a mountain, they’ve made it survivable at several locations, some
of which are known and some which may not be known,” he said. But Pike
warned against mothballing the mountain, saying, “We’ve spent a lot of
money developing that capability of running that kind of facility. I
would not want to forget how to do that.” Christopher He`llman, military
policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
in Washington, D.C., said it may not be essential to retain the
facility. “If you have other capabilities and you have that redundancy,
there’s nothing that makes Cheyenne unique,” he said. “Then it boils
down to how easily can you staff it, and how costly is it to operate.
Those are administrative decisions, not strategic ones.” CONTACT THE
WRITER: 636-0238 or pam.zubeck@gazette.com CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
CONSTRUCTION FACTS The underground complex opened in April 1966 and was
built to withstand an attack by the Soviet Union. It could not withstand
a hit by a modern intercontinental ballistic missile, but is considered
a stronghold against many threats. - The Army Corps of Engineers used
1.5 million pounds of dynamite to excavate about 700,000 tons of
granite. - The complex has 15 buildings, 12 of which are three stories. -
The complex rests on 1,319, 1,000-pound springs that allow the complex
to sway up to a foot horizontally in any direction. - The tunnel is
reinforced by 110,000 rock bolts six to 32 feet in length that push
outward on the walls to prevent implosion or cave-in. - The two blast
doors are 25 tons, 3 1/2-feet-thick baffled steel. - Roughly 800 people
work inside the mountain, about 200 per shift. POSSIBLE CHANGES AT
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN OPERATIONS CENTER - The center could be placed on
“warm standby,” which a source said would mean maintaining the center
but fully staffing it only when needed. - The study suggests moving 150
people, about a third of the work force, to Peterson Air Force Base to
eliminate repetitive jobs and achieve “substantial savings.” - One
account of the study’s findings outlines plans to move the missile
defense and air defense missions to Peterson, missile warning to Offutt
Air Force Base, Neb., and the space mission to Vandenberg Air Force
Base, Calif. ABOUT THE STUDY The $100,000 study was ordered in February
by Adm. Timothy Keating, chief of the North American Aerospace Defense
Command and the U.S. Northern Command. It is being done by the NORAD and
NorthCom operations directorate and should be completed this summer.