A WARY EYE ON THE SKY

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 11, 2008 | by PAM ZUBECK

The U.S. in 1958 was in the grip of the Cold War.

Schoolchildren went through nuclear attack drills, diving under desks and covering their heads.

Suburbanites built concrete bomb shelters stocked with canned food in which they could wait out Armageddon.

That was the atmosphere of fear bred by the specter of mutual destruction in which the North American Aerospace Defense Command was born 50 years ago with the idea that being forewarned might tip the balance in North America's favor.

It led the United States and Canada to sign an agreement on May 12, 1958, to create the command that would later be located inside Cheyenne Mountain southwest of Colorado Springs.

Since it began, the command has gone through several generations of technology, survived the Cold War, fell short in responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, shifted focus to internal threats and added maritime oversight.

The command has run through billions of dollars rigging and rerigging the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station command center.

Its mission -- warn of attacks and send jets or missiles to intercept the threat -- gave rise to futuristic films and put Colorado Springs on the map as a defense stronghold.

NORAD has been a magnet for space-related business in the city and state, said Elliot Pulham, president and CEO of the Space Foundation, founded in 1983.

As threats changed, the command reinvented itself, he said.

"Out of that changing paradigm emerged this entire space community, which is now one of the largest employers in the state with $10 billion in revenue that never existed before NORAD," Pulham said.

As the intellectual capacity and economic effects grew, Colorado Springs took its place as a space capital, Pulham said.

"This became a place where space dealmaking was done," he said. "It's had a huge influence."

NORAD's recent partnerships with NorthCom and the Homeland Security Department have brought additional effects by attracting permanent offices of other agencies, he said.

This month, day-to-day operations will transfer from the mountain to NORAD and NorthCom headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base.

While critics say the security and protection of an above-ground office can't compare with Cheyenne Mountain's 2,000 feet of granite, NORAD's future might be clouded by more compelling questions.

"It's no longer the centerpiece of American defense, because the threat to our security has changed dramatically," said Christopher Hellman, military policy fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, D.C.

NORAD's commander, Gen. Gene Renuart, said the mission remains relevant and its duties may expand.

"The nature of the threats we see," he said in an interview, "traditional and nontraditional, potential terrorist organizations or rogue nations, the importance of having a command that focuses on the threats out there and the ability to find them and warn of them continues to be critical for the United States and Canada."

NORAD begins

Caught up in the space and arms races of the Cold War, the U.S. found itself behind the game. The Soviets launched the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, and the U.S. Airborne Early Warning aircraft was sent to the Pacific, leaving the Arctic Circle unprotected.

Americans responded by sending Explorer 1, 2 and 3 into orbit and intensified work with Canada, setting up radar stations to detect an attack over the North Pole. The Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line), a network of 58 stations along the 69th parallel, gave three hours' warning of attack.

The need to centralize control of such systems led to the creation of NORAD on Sept. 12, 1957, at Ent Air Force Base, now the home of the Olympic Training Center, in a town of 70,000. A formal agreement followed in May.

Colorado Springs was chosen largely because of its location. It was beyond the reach of Russia's shortrange, inaccurate missiles. Even bombs of the era couldn't have penetrated the 9,565-foot mountain off Colorado Highway 115.

When the command center opened in 1966, though, the Soviets were developing long-range missiles with multiple nuclear warheads that could leave a crater where the mountain once stood.

In May 1961, blasting began on a command center estimated to cost $66 million. When it opened in April 1966, the cost had increased to $142.4 million.

It wasn't the last cost overrun. One technology upgrade, started in 1982 and finished in 1998, was 11 years late and cost twice the estimate of $968 million.

Again in 2001, NORAD undertook modernizing and integrating its warning systems. By 2006, the project was behind schedule and, at $707 million, 51 percent over initial estimates, the General Accountability Office said.

NORAD equipment and personnel aren't foolproof and led to two failures that could have caused nuclear war.

On Nov. 9, 1979, a NORAD technician loaded a test tape but didn't switch the status to "test," triggering false warnings to command posts worldwide. NORAD assessed no attack was under way within eight minutes, but the incident caused public and congressional concern.