Cheyenne Mountain Complex


The Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a non-public military installation of the United States Department of Defense located inside Cheyenne Mountain, in El Paso County, Colorado. It is the training complex for crew qualification, and is an alternate command center for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and United States Northern Command. The installation was established in February 1967 as a bunker and operations center, and designed to be partially resistant to attack by nuclear-tipped missiles. Built and owned by the Department of Defense, it also has Royal Canadian Air Force personnel serving there.
The Cold War meant that hardened installations resistant to attacks by the Soviet Union were necessary. The initial funds for its construction amounted to $142.4 million. During the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the complex was locked down, and it later continued normal operations. During 2008, NORAD, and USNORTHCOM were relocated and the installation was re-designated as the alternate main operations center. Since that time, Peterson Space Force Base, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado is responsible for managing the installation.

Construction

Significant confrontations, and drastic nuclear threats−occurred during the Korean War, the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and more broadly the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States and Canada created the North American Air Defense Command. In the late 1950s, the missiles from Cuba could reach the United States very quickly. A proposal was developed for an airspace command and control center to shelter multiple major Department of Defense components concerning nuclear missiles and detection to more effectively deter long–ranged Soviet bombers. Personnel at the complex developed techniques to raise the chance of detection of Soviet attack.
Strategic Air Command began construction at Bare Mountain, Massachusetts, for the Eighth Air Force. It was the first bunker capable of surviving a nuclear blast and designed so that the senior military staff could facilitate further military operations. The excavation of the mountainous terrain on Cheyenne Mountain in the vicinity of Colorado Springs, Colorado began on May 18, 1961 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers for the construction of the North American Air Defense Command primary Combat Operations Center. The Utah Construction & Mining Company was selected for drilling and blasting into Cheyenne Mountain. The Burroughs Corporation would create the electronics and communications system that centralized and automated the instantaneous evaluation of aerospace surveillance data. On February 6, 1967, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex Complex was operational. The Space Defense Center moved from Ent AFB to the complex in 1967. The Space Defense Command's 1st Aerospace Control Squadron would also be relocated to Cheyenne Mountain. By January 4, 1967, the National Civil Defense Warning Center was in the bunker.
Two systems and commands were made operational in 1967:
  • The NORAD Attack Warning System,
  • Combat Operations Command, and Delta I computer system, which recorded and monitored every detected space system. The Combat Operation Command would later be renamed the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Command.

    Formation

After the installation's initial construction, the Electronic Systems Division Detachment operating at Ent Air Force Base, serving as the Cheyenne Mountain Management Office, closed on October 1, 1976. Later on, the Aerospace Defense Command was assigned to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex until it was deactivated in 1980. Both NORAD, and USNORTHCOM staffed the Space Surveillance Center in the same room as the Missile Warning Center, separated by partitions. The headquarters of the Cheyenne Mountain support groups established at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in October 1981. Providing aid to the Aerospace Defense Center's operation of NORAD's primary combat operations center. In 1983 the Foreign Technology Division had an operating location at the bunker and in 1992, an airman of the "1010th Civil Engineering Squadron at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base" developed a 3-D AutoCAD model of the bunker "to zoom in on a specific room". In 1995, a "missile operations section" supported the missile warning center. During 1989−2001 it was managed by 1st Airborne Command Control Squadron at the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, and later was renamed to the 1st Space Control Squadron.
Several variants of the Soviet R-36 had single 18-25 megaton warheads targeted on complexes such as Cheyenne Mountain:
The citadel that had been built to ensure official survival during a planetary holocaust was, by then, sure to be among the initial targets struck by those ICBMs -- perhaps a dozen or more warheads -- to ensure a “first strike kill.” Our job was simply to detect the coming nuclear attack by the Soviets and act quickly enough to coordinate a retaliatory strike -- to ensure that the Soviet part of the planet went down -- before we, too, were obliterated.

Cold War

The System Development Corporation updated Air Defense Command satellite information processing systems for $15,850,542 on January 19, 1973. The improvements were primarily to the Space Computational Center's displays and application software, which was updated to provide real-time positioning of orbiting space systems for the NORAD Combat Operation Center. The first phase, which established a system integrator and modernized the communications to a major data processing system, was completed in October 1972.
The Ballistic Missile Defense Center BW 1.2 release was installed in February 1974 in the Combat Operations Center, under the command of CONAD. The Safeguard command and control system, operated by the commander, communicated warnings, observation data, and attack assessment to the Combat Operations Center. It was also designed to release nuclear weapons. By 1978, five operating centers and a command post resided within the NORAD Combat Operations Center. The Space Computational Center catalogued and tracked space objects. The Intelligence Center analyzed intelligence data. Data was consolidated and displayed in the Command Post by the System Center. The Weather Support Unit monitored local and global weather patterns.
The NORAD Commander's wartime staff reported to the Battle Staff Support Center.The Space Defense Operations Center, established on October 1, 1979, consolidated United States Air Force satellite survivability, space surveillance, and US ASAT operations into one wartime space activities hub at the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Space surveillance and missile warning functions were performed by the Core Processing Segment using Worldwide Military Command and Control System's Honeywell H6080 computers at the SPADOC Computational Center and NORAD Computer System. A third computer was operational backup for SCC or NCS. By 1981, the H6080 failed to meet the requirements for timely computations. SPADATS was deactivated about 1980, although some of its logic continued on in SPADOC systems.
NORAD had a series of warning and assessment systems that were not fully automated in the Cheyenne Mountain complex into the 1970s. In 1979, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex Improvements Program 427M system became fully operational. It was a consolidated Cheyenne Mountain Upgrade program for command center, space, ballistic missile, and space functions, developed using new software technology and designed for computers with large processing capacity. There were three major segments of the 427M system: the Communication System Segment, NORAD Computer System, and Space Computational Center.
The 425L Command and Control System, Display Information Processor, Command Center Processing System, and other hardware were replaced by the NORAD Computer System. The new system was designed to centralize several databases, improve on-line display capabilities, and consolidate mission warning information processing and transmission. It was intended to have greater reliability and quicker early warning capability. The Command Center Processing System's original UNIVAC 1106, re-purposed for Mission Essential Back-up Capability, was upgraded to the more robust UNIVAC 1100/42. The 427M system, intended to modernize systems and improve performance, was initially "wholly ineffective" and resulted in several failures of the Worldwide Military Command and Control System system.
In 1979 and 1980, there were a few instances when false missile warnings were generated by the Cheyenne Mountain complex systems. For instance, a computer chip "went haywire" and issued false missile warnings, which raised the possibility that a nuclear war could be started accidentally, based upon incorrect data. Staff analyzed the data and found that the warnings were erroneous, and the systems were updated to identify false alarms. Gen. James V. Hartinger of the Air Force stated that "his primary responsibility is to provide Washington with what he calls 'timely, unambiguous, reliable warning' that a raid on North America has begun." He explained that there are about 6,700 messages generated on average each hour in 1979 and 1980 and all had been processed without error. An off-site testing facility was established in Colorado Springs by NORAD in late 1979 or early 1980 so that system changes could be tested off-line before they were moved into production. Following another failure in 1980, a bad computer chip was updated, and staff and commander processes were improved to better respond to warnings.
The threat of crewed bomber aircraft was slowly superseded by intercontinental ballistic missiles. So the Air Force's Aerospace Defense Command was inactivated in 1980, and the few fighters and radar control arrangements remaining refashioned as Air Defense, Tactical Air Command.
The Cheyenne Mountain Upgrade of November 1988, designed to consolidate five improvement programs, was not installed because it was not compatible with other systems at Cheyenne Mountain and it did not meet the defined specifications according to deficiencies identified during testing. The five improvement programs were the CCPDS Replacement, CSS Replacement, and SPADOC 4 block A achieved initial operating capability in April 1989. The CSS-R "first element" achieved IOC on April 12, 1991; and the 427M system was replaced. The CSSR, SCIS, Granite Sentry, CCPDS-R, and their interfaces were tested in 1997. Testing of Granite Sentry nuclear detonation data processing system found it to be inadequate.
The Joint Surveillance System, developed under an agreement with the Canadian government, became fully operational in seven Region Operations Control Centers on December 23, 1983. The Joint Surveillance System was implemented to replace Semi-Automatic Ground Environment.
In 1986, Congress approved development of the Survivable Communications Integration System to communicate missile warning messages simultaneously over many forms of media, but it was subject to delays and cost overruns. By 1992, the project was estimated to be delayed to 1995 and cost projected to increase from $142 million to $234 million.
Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex provided increase radar and satellite monitoring, communication, and heavy reconnaissance in the region.