[MilCom] NORAD stand down

[Steve Douglass]

Norad, Northern Command to leave Cheyenne Mountain

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The Northern Aerospace Defense Command 
(Norad) and Northern Command will leave Cheyenne Mountain Air Force 
Station within two years, reducing the current base of 1,100 military 
and civilian employees in the underground city by as much as half.

Cheyenne Mountain will continue to house operations of the Air Force 
Space Command, Northern Command, and National Reconnaissance Office, 
as well as civilian operations of the Federal Aviation 
Administration. All agencies are reviewing future operations there.
Norad and Northern Command will move the bulk of their operations to 
nearby Peterson Air Force Base, though they will keep Cheyenne on 
what Norad/Northern Command chief Adm. Timothy Keating called "warm 
standby." While workstations and radar consoles at the base have 
recently been upgraded, its technology had been considered outdated 
since at least the early 1980s.

Technology innovations for satellite downlinks in recent years have 
been introduced at Buckley Air Force Base (Aurora, Colo.), while 
satellite uplinks were introduced at Schriever Air Force Base, 20 
miles east of Cheyenne Mountain. That left the underground city 
southwest of here as primarily a management center for early warning. 
Keating said he had little reason to be in a blast-hardened secure 
facility.
Since Sept. 11, alternative underground command centers near 
Washington such as Raven Rock and Mount Weather, have found new uses 
as distributed command posts. Keating said it is feasible that 
Cheyenne Mountain might play a similar role in the future.
But the new drawdown of 200 to 500 employees may be followed by more 
reductions, leaving Cheyenne Mountain with a skeleton crew in the 
aftermath of the Cold War.

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