It’s not all that well known, but NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain bunker has been on “warm standby” for several years now. Its functions were transferred to a local Air Force base in Colorado Springs, while a skeleton crew kept all the computers and whatnot spun up and ready to go. I know this because my wife’s current and former boss were in charge of the Lockheed program to upgrade the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
Well:
The US military command that scans North America’s skies for enemy missiles and aircraft plans to move its communications gear to a Cold War-era mountain bunker, officers said.
The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command’s sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, military officers said.
The Pentagon last week announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon Corporation to oversee the work for North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command.
I knew Lockheed had been underbid by Raytheon to perform the newest round of upgrades to Cheyenne, but I didn’t know — there’s classified work stuff Melissa isn’t allowed to talk about — that Cheyenne was going back online.
Now I don’t know whether that’s because of convenience, or heightened security risk, or what — but surely this is indicative of something.
Any guesses?
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