7 ms·

Inside NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Combat Center

133 points by quakeguy 10y ago

chrissnell 10y ago
I used to live in Colorado Springs, just outside north fence of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. It's not in active use these days--the USAF has moved their command center out to Peterson AFB east of town. If you're sneaky about it, you can actually hike to the top of Cheyenne Mountain, staying just outside the fenceline. You're crossing private property but once you get past the neighborhood, nobody will bother you.
stesch 10y ago
Cheyenne Mountain? I thought they just have deep space telemetry there!?
- rhizome 10y ago
  That, and an IMSAI 8080 named "Joshua."
  - packetslave 10y ago
    Joshua was the WOPR, which was created by Hollywood. The IMSAI 8080 was David's home computer. http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Doh.
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  No. they have a stargate there.
trias 10y ago
there has been a documentation / feature on german tv about this complex. It didn't appear to be very secretive anymore. They film the control room at 14:00 http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/videos/2016257-exklusive-einblicke-in-die-us-militaerbasis-cheyenne-mountain-clip http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/videos/2016257-exklusive-...
frostburg 10y ago
I recall people arguing that in strategic thinking, Cheyenne Mountain was/is basically a missile sponge, not a necessary control hub.
- njharman 10y ago
  They're plenty of REVs to go around.
- sgnelson 10y ago
  I don't think that was true, though it could have been possible at the very beginning when the Cheyenne Mountain complex was being built in 1960. But I'm skeptical for a few reasons. One is the infamous "missile gap," which Kennedy arguably used to help win the 1960 election. This was a belief that the Soviets had many more warheads and missiles than us, and was completely untrue. If this was the belief (at least as of 1959/1960), then it doesn't make too much sense to design an expensive "missile sponge" such as this. With the introduction of long range bombers, sub launched missiles and land based ICBM's, each side had so many nukes by the 60's, that the Soviets could have dropped a hundred nukes on the mountain and they would still have enough warheads to drop on every decently sized American city. (in 1965, they had over 6000 warheads, by 1970 they had over 11,000 [1], it grew from there.) It's also worth noting that nuclear warheads/missiles both became much more powerful and more accurate during this time. Another thing that makes me question this, is the book Command and Control that I mentioned earlier in the comments. From reading it, the author's thesis is that there was no true command and control up until the 1980's (and even then...) That's to say, it existed, but it had many problems such as difficulty of communications between each missile site/air base/sub, slow speed in communications, various organizations that were involved, lack of adaptability, and then have all of this happen while the country is being nuked. (Many of the things that modern telecommunications were designed specifically for, and have arguably solved, less the very important human element.) All of this is to say, a centralized place and system for a control hub was very necessary to both determine if an attack was occurring and how to respond to said attack. I don't think it would have been a very effective warhead sink. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto... btw, with the Missile Gap, also check out the Bomber Gap. Yay American Military Industrial Complex, nothing like using a little bit of fear to make some money building unnecessary weapons of war and getting politicians elected to office! It's a win win!
mast 10y ago
The Canadian equivalent was in North Bay Ontario. I worked there briefly in the '90s. It was an interesting experience. I remember the guards and the bus ride to the bottom always made me nervous. https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/11/the-brotherhood-of-underground-mushroomers-deep-inside-a-cold-war-nerve-centre/ https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/11/the-brotherhood-of-und... https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=HRvPPnHMsyE https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=HRvPPnHMsyE
sverige 10y ago
When I lived in Colorado Springs, my wife was friends with the wife of one of the military security guards at Cheyenne Mountain. We went on one of the last public tours of the facility in April of 1996 (IIRC). None of the doors in the buildings had any indication of what went on behind them, just numbers, or maybe number-letter combinations. We followed our guide through a maze of these featureless corridors with the anonymous doors all closed, then were ushered into the command center. It's pretty small, maybe holds 20 people around a conference table in close quarters. The folks who monitor everything in the world were right next door. One wall is a glass partition between the two rooms, but they pulled a curtain over that because there was some incident going on right then that we were not authorized to see. Then we got a walking tour of much of the rest of the underground complex. The tunnels are wide and high, and there are big reservoirs of water and diesel fuel along the sides. It was really fascinating. Of course no photos were allowed, but I still have a fairly good mental picture of parts of it 20 years later. The photo of the gigantic blast door took me right back - we walked through that very spot. Edit: Thinking about it more, the most surprising thing was the scale of the place. It's a quarter mile from the tunnel entrance around the bend (meant as a way to diffuse the energy from a nuclear blast) to the big steel door. We all rode a bus back to that point. We walked about a half mile or maybe more to near the bottom of the other end of the main tunnel. If you look at the diagram in the story, it doesn't do justice to the sense of how much work went into carving out the middle of that mountain. The conference room where command decisions were made might have only held 12, not 20. It was very small and spartan. I remember thinking, Shit, the fate of the world might be decided in a room smaller than our conference room at work. Also, it might have been April 1998, not '96.
- DavidSJ 10y ago
  To me what's surprising is that they allowed tours at all, and sometimes even let you see the command center. Or maybe this was all part of the plan to make the nuclear deterrent credible.
- dankohn1 10y ago
  I love the tour visiting NORAD in the movie War Games, which enabled the protagonist to slip out.
sgnelson 10y ago
The author states that NORAD "... dropped the ball on 9/11.." Let's be clear, NORAD did not drop the ball on 9/11. You can certainly make the argument that the FBI, CIA, and NSA (and other US intelligence services) dropped the ball on 9/11, but NORAD did not. NORAD's primary goal has never been to stop terrorism/hijacking from occurring on passenger planes within the United States, but rather to warn of enemy planes and missiles from _entering_ the US. (this did change somewhat after 9/11, but that's after the fact...) Frankly, I stopped reading the article after this line, because clearly the author doesn't know what they're talking about. But if you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend starting here: Strategic Air Command: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command I just finished reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, it's a pretty decent primer on early US nuclear deterrence and such things as SAC and NORAD. (though there are better books specifically about SAC/NORAD, this is an overarching general/popular history.)
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > Let's be clear, NORAD did not drop the ball on 9/11...NORAD's primary goal has never been to stop terrorism/hijacking from occurring on passenger planes within the United States, but rather to warn of enemy planes and missiles from _entering_ the US. I have no idea whether NORAD deserved any blame, but Wikipedia suggests NORAD's mission includes scrambling jets to deal with hijacked airplanes: > Standing orders on September 11 dictated that, upon receiving a request for assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) would normally order escort aircraft to approach and follow an aircraft that was confirmed to be hijacked in order to assure positive flight following, report unusual observances, and aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency.[1] The 9/11 Commission determined that on the morning of September 11, the FAA deliberately did not adequately notify NORAD of the hijackings of Flights 11, 77, 93, or 175 in time for escort aircraft to reach the hijacked flights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_... I mean, I guess you could argue that's not their "primary mission", but then I don't think that is in conflict with the OP's assertion that they "dropped the ball".
manav 10y ago
Where's the Stargate?
sgnelson 10y ago
Two great websites that you can learn more about the Cold War and Nuclear weapons are: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/
jorblumesea 10y ago
The Cheyenne complex isn't some classified thing anymore. You can easily find docs on it: https://youtu.be/lQPGJSIq3ys https://youtu.be/lQPGJSIq3ys
- teh_klev 10y ago
  A five minute PR video on YouTube doesn't really amount to much.
blahi 10y ago
Nothing about col. O'Neill (two Ls) or Daniel Jackson?

133 points by quakeguy 10y ago

I used to live in Colorado Springs, just outside north fence of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. It's not in active use these days--the USAF has moved their command center out to Peterson AFB east of town. If you're sneaky about it, you can actually hike to the top of Cheyenne Mountain, staying just outside the fenceline. You're crossing private property but once you get past the neighborhood, nobody will bother you.

stesch 10y ago

Cheyenne Mountain? I thought they just have deep space telemetry there!?

rhizome 10y ago
That, and an IMSAI 8080 named "Joshua."
- packetslave 10y ago
  Joshua was the WOPR, which was created by Hollywood. The IMSAI 8080 was David's home computer. http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Doh.
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
No. they have a stargate there.

trias 10y ago

there has been a documentation / feature on german tv about this complex. It didn't appear to be very secretive anymore. They film the control room at 14:00 http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/videos/2016257-exklusive-einblicke-in-die-us-militaerbasis-cheyenne-mountain-clip http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/videos/2016257-exklusive-...

frostburg 10y ago

I recall people arguing that in strategic thinking, Cheyenne Mountain was/is basically a missile sponge, not a necessary control hub.

njharman 10y ago
They're plenty of REVs to go around.
sgnelson 10y ago
I don't think that was true, though it could have been possible at the very beginning when the Cheyenne Mountain complex was being built in 1960. But I'm skeptical for a few reasons. One is the infamous "missile gap," which Kennedy arguably used to help win the 1960 election. This was a belief that the Soviets had many more warheads and missiles than us, and was completely untrue. If this was the belief (at least as of 1959/1960), then it doesn't make too much sense to design an expensive "missile sponge" such as this. With the introduction of long range bombers, sub launched missiles and land based ICBM's, each side had so many nukes by the 60's, that the Soviets could have dropped a hundred nukes on the mountain and they would still have enough warheads to drop on every decently sized American city. (in 1965, they had over 6000 warheads, by 1970 they had over 11,000 [1], it grew from there.) It's also worth noting that nuclear warheads/missiles both became much more powerful and more accurate during this time. Another thing that makes me question this, is the book Command and Control that I mentioned earlier in the comments. From reading it, the author's thesis is that there was no true command and control up until the 1980's (and even then...) That's to say, it existed, but it had many problems such as difficulty of communications between each missile site/air base/sub, slow speed in communications, various organizations that were involved, lack of adaptability, and then have all of this happen while the country is being nuked. (Many of the things that modern telecommunications were designed specifically for, and have arguably solved, less the very important human element.) All of this is to say, a centralized place and system for a control hub was very necessary to both determine if an attack was occurring and how to respond to said attack. I don't think it would have been a very effective warhead sink. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto... btw, with the Missile Gap, also check out the Bomber Gap. Yay American Military Industrial Complex, nothing like using a little bit of fear to make some money building unnecessary weapons of war and getting politicians elected to office! It's a win win!

mast 10y ago

The Canadian equivalent was in North Bay Ontario. I worked there briefly in the '90s. It was an interesting experience. I remember the guards and the bus ride to the bottom always made me nervous. https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/11/the-brotherhood-of-underground-mushroomers-deep-inside-a-cold-war-nerve-centre/ https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/11/the-brotherhood-of-und... https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=HRvPPnHMsyE https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=HRvPPnHMsyE

sverige 10y ago

When I lived in Colorado Springs, my wife was friends with the wife of one of the military security guards at Cheyenne Mountain. We went on one of the last public tours of the facility in April of 1996 (IIRC). None of the doors in the buildings had any indication of what went on behind them, just numbers, or maybe number-letter combinations. We followed our guide through a maze of these featureless corridors with the anonymous doors all closed, then were ushered into the command center. It's pretty small, maybe holds 20 people around a conference table in close quarters. The folks who monitor everything in the world were right next door. One wall is a glass partition between the two rooms, but they pulled a curtain over that because there was some incident going on right then that we were not authorized to see. Then we got a walking tour of much of the rest of the underground complex. The tunnels are wide and high, and there are big reservoirs of water and diesel fuel along the sides. It was really fascinating. Of course no photos were allowed, but I still have a fairly good mental picture of parts of it 20 years later. The photo of the gigantic blast door took me right back - we walked through that very spot. Edit: Thinking about it more, the most surprising thing was the scale of the place. It's a quarter mile from the tunnel entrance around the bend (meant as a way to diffuse the energy from a nuclear blast) to the big steel door. We all rode a bus back to that point. We walked about a half mile or maybe more to near the bottom of the other end of the main tunnel. If you look at the diagram in the story, it doesn't do justice to the sense of how much work went into carving out the middle of that mountain. The conference room where command decisions were made might have only held 12, not 20. It was very small and spartan. I remember thinking, Shit, the fate of the world might be decided in a room smaller than our conference room at work. Also, it might have been April 1998, not '96.

DavidSJ 10y ago
To me what's surprising is that they allowed tours at all, and sometimes even let you see the command center. Or maybe this was all part of the plan to make the nuclear deterrent credible.
dankohn1 10y ago
I love the tour visiting NORAD in the movie War Games, which enabled the protagonist to slip out.

sgnelson 10y ago

The author states that NORAD "... dropped the ball on 9/11.." Let's be clear, NORAD did not drop the ball on 9/11. You can certainly make the argument that the FBI, CIA, and NSA (and other US intelligence services) dropped the ball on 9/11, but NORAD did not. NORAD's primary goal has never been to stop terrorism/hijacking from occurring on passenger planes within the United States, but rather to warn of enemy planes and missiles from _entering_ the US. (this did change somewhat after 9/11, but that's after the fact...) Frankly, I stopped reading the article after this line, because clearly the author doesn't know what they're talking about. But if you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend starting here: Strategic Air Command: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command I just finished reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, it's a pretty decent primer on early US nuclear deterrence and such things as SAC and NORAD. (though there are better books specifically about SAC/NORAD, this is an overarching general/popular history.)

jessriedel 10y ago
> Let's be clear, NORAD did not drop the ball on 9/11...NORAD's primary goal has never been to stop terrorism/hijacking from occurring on passenger planes within the United States, but rather to warn of enemy planes and missiles from _entering_ the US. I have no idea whether NORAD deserved any blame, but Wikipedia suggests NORAD's mission includes scrambling jets to deal with hijacked airplanes: > Standing orders on September 11 dictated that, upon receiving a request for assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) would normally order escort aircraft to approach and follow an aircraft that was confirmed to be hijacked in order to assure positive flight following, report unusual observances, and aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency.[1] The 9/11 Commission determined that on the morning of September 11, the FAA deliberately did not adequately notify NORAD of the hijackings of Flights 11, 77, 93, or 175 in time for escort aircraft to reach the hijacked flights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_... I mean, I guess you could argue that's not their "primary mission", but then I don't think that is in conflict with the OP's assertion that they "dropped the ball".

manav 10y ago

Where's the Stargate?

sgnelson 10y ago

Two great websites that you can learn more about the Cold War and Nuclear weapons are: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/ https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/

jorblumesea 10y ago

The Cheyenne complex isn't some classified thing anymore. You can easily find docs on it: https://youtu.be/lQPGJSIq3ys https://youtu.be/lQPGJSIq3ys

teh_klev 10y ago
A five minute PR video on YouTube doesn't really amount to much.

blahi 10y ago

Nothing about col. O'Neill (two Ls) or Daniel Jackson?