NORAD opens gates to celebrate 60th anniversary
This week marks a milestone for NORAD, as the only bi-national military command turns 60 years old.
To celebrate the history and the future of the US-Canada agreement, the gates of Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station opened Thursday to a select group of media outlets.
It took an army of workers to blast out nearly 700,000 tons of granite and create this underground city, a series of 2-story and 3-story buildings floating on springs that can operate on an independent supply of air, power, water.
The complex has its own medical clinic, chapel, and gym.
The famous 23-ton blast doors shield it from not only a nuclear attack, but also an EMP attack, and despite improvements to nuclear weapons since the time the complex was designed in the 1950’s, those who maintain the mountain believe it would stand up to a modern day atomic bomb.
Steve Rose, the deputy director of the 721st Mission Support Group who often acts as the mayor of the base, says although it’s hard to predict, “We wouldn’t be here with the facility completely full with important missions if we didn’t believe that it would survive an attack.”
10 years ago, NORAD’s primary headquarters moved to Peterson AFB, but the mountain still houses the Alternate Command Center, and has all the capabilities despite a much smaller space.
Cheyenne Mountain was created in the Cold War, but has evolved, and is from a museum.
It is able to monitor modern threats in the air, at sea, and in space, as well as identify and detect missile launches from overseas.
Canadien Col. Travis Morehen, the deputy director of NORAD/NORTHCOM, says, “With the resurgence of the Russian military’s capabilities, and certainly Chinese ICBM’s, NORAD’s responsibility to positively identify and detect and give that warning of missile threats to North America, that has certainly caused us to stay on our game.”
The level of threat itself against NORAD has also evolved over the years.
For example, it was previously required that one of the two blast doors remain closed at all times.
That changed in 1991 with the Cold War cooling.
Today, both are allowed to remain open.
The last time they closed due to a threat against the nation was September 11, 2001.
The doors reopened 4-6 hours later.
However, crews practice as if a worst case scenario could develop any minute.
“I like training, ” explains Col. Morehen, “so sometimes I tell the crews ‘move, move now.’ And they kind of look at me, and I go ‘I’m not joking’ and they start moving. So it’s something they take very seriously.”
Cheyenne Mountain was built for the worst day in American history, but today, the facility is meant to prevent that day as much as it is to survive it.
