Slashdot Mirror
Cheyenne Mountain Shutting Down
WilliamSChips writes "The United States military has announced that they are shutting down the facility at Cheyenne Mountain, home to the high-tech NORAD which tracks every object in the sky. NORAD's operations will be moved to the nearby Peterson Air Force base. The mountain facility is being placed on standby in case they need it again." From the article: "The Cheyenne Mountain center, at the eastern foot of the Rockies near the base of Pikes Peak, was constructed underground in the mid-1960s. Fearing nuclear attacks at the time, the United States built sites such as the Cheyenne Mountain complex. The Navy prepared a floating White House aboard the communications cruiser USS Northampton, in case the president needed to be evacuated from U.S. soil. Another protective bunker was created near White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., for members of Congress."
My fearless leader.....Dick Cheney....keeps telling me how we are in imminent danger of some rogue state, North Korea, Iraq, Iran or terrorist group, lobbing a nuke at us. On the one hand we have the whole "mushroom cloud" syndrome, and now the Pentagon tells me our penultimate bunker isn't really needed any more to defend our command and control center from a "mushroom cloud". Cheyenne Mountain actually wasn't worth much during the cold war when our main adversary had multi megaton nukes. It actually might stand up to the kiloton class nukes rogue states and terrorist groups are most likely to get. So we move command and control to a place where it will be relatively easy to destroy and decapitate one of the most critical command and control centers we have. And we do it AFTER we spend $700 million in a failed attempt to upgrade the one we are closing down. You really have to wonder if the people in charge really are completely incompetent to manage their own affairs let alone those of a superpower.
@de_machina
"Present threats - including those that you describe - do not have that capability."
Actually Russia still has that capability, its somewhat smaller than it was but its still there. One wonders why people pretend its not still there when it is. Russia is making such a killing on their oil and gas reserves I imagine its unlikely they will bother with a nuclear war, but hey a coup and a wacko get the keys, or relations continue to sour, anything could happen.
Relations with Russia are in fact not very good. The U.S. has been treating Russia like dirt since the U.S.S.R collapsed. Gary Kasparov, chess grand master and now Democracy advocates, makes the interesting observation that Putin may be cheering on the chaos in the Middle East because everything that inflates oil and gas prices is a windfall for Russia.
All in all you have to wonder about the wisdom of replacing America's penultimate bunker and command and control facility with an extremely vulnerable office building that could easily be attacked with conventional weapons, a truck bomb or chemical or biological weapons. Cheyenne Mountain was, if nothing else, good for PR and intimidation value.
One question would be where the ABM system is controlled from. If its NORAD, and your worried the ABM system might work, then you take out NORAD first and then open the door for the ICBM's from North Korea.
All in all it just seems like a silly move to make especially after you've just sunk $700 million in to Cheyenne Mountain.
@de_machina
that's funny but I think it's true. There can only really be 2 reasons this is happening (based on my knowledge of miltary planning ahem)
1. As you said, it's a bluff
2. They've got something much much better built now and are going to it.
The administration is busy commissioning more nuke weapons and Russia is becoming more threatening by the day. WW3 is near to breaking out all over the ME. No way are the military winding anything down.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"