Cheyenne Mountain being remodeled

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jan 26, 2004 | by PAM ZUBECK THE GAZETTE

The Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center is being enlarged and remodeled for the first time since it opened in 1966.

The $13 million project makes room for the expanded role of the North American Aerospace Defense Command into the controversial arena of ground missile defense.

The project will double the command center's 540 square feet.

Those carrying out NORAD's mission of space monitoring and air defense are crammed in with people added since the Sept. 11 attacks, including staff for the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Northern Command.

Northern Command was established in 2002 to deter, prevent and defeat threats and aggression toward the United States and to help civil authorities during times of crisis.

Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, consisting of 15 buildings inside the mountain where about 800 people work, serves NORAD and Northern Command with the Cheyenne Mountain Operation Center.

The center monitors aircraft and missiles, tracks 8,500 man-made objects orbiting Earth, keeps an eye on weather events and monitors intelligence gathered through those efforts.

It's been busier since the Sept. 11 attacks prompted the military to realign the mission to monitor activities in the United States in addition to those outside North America's borders.

The command center plays a role when fighter aircraft cruise the skies over the United States and shadow suspicious aircraft when necessary.

NORAD is taking on the new mission of using its missile warning information to help direct ground-based missile defenses. The defense systems, which will be used to shoot down missiles headed toward the United States, are expected to be operational this year.

Ordered by President Bush, the project has been sharply criticized as being premature. Critics say it's unwise to deploy the system before it's fully tested.

Advocates argue it is a first step toward intercepting missiles. The military can only detect a launch and track the missile now.

"With those changes coming in here, we could have shoehorned a lot of that into the old command center," said Canadian Air Force Brig. Gen. J.D. Hunter, operations center vice commander.

"But given the fact the thing had not been renovated for many years and given the fact that we were expanding our role with a number of people coming in, we felt it was time to get our arms around it."

During construction, by Colorado Springs firm John Bowman Inc., the center has been moved to another office in the mountain. Construction began in August and is to be completed in July. Technology upgrades will be finished by October -- in time for ground missile defense activation.

The work includes gutting the old center and installing more work stations to improve across-the-room communication, as well as conversations with other installations.

"The command director is going to be able to see everybody," Hunter said. "Eye contact in the way we do business here is critical. We have to make sure people understand what you're telling them to do when you're telling them.

"It's going to be very, very state-ofthe-art. We get the job done all the time regardless, but it's certainly going to make getting that job done a much more positive experience."

Some furnishings that date to the 1960s will be preserved at the Peterson Air and Space Museum at Peterson Air Force Base.

A larger project to upgrade NORAD's more than 40 systems, as well as components at U.S. Strategic Command, is in its fourth of 15 years.

The $1.5 billion project, by Lockheed Martin, will replace and modernize air and space surveillance, missile defense and warning and satellite controls.

"Currently, NORAD has systems that are decades old that perform well on their own, but it's hard to make them work together as an integrated piece," said Matt Kramer, Lockheed spokesman.

The Lockheed project will speed the sharing of information and wartime responses.

During the first Gulf War, assembling information sometimes took days, he said.

System improvements since have cut the time to hours, and the new system will move the American military closer to real-time reactions, he said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or zubeck@gazette.com