Here's a dramatic example of how narrow bureaucratic budget-think continues to undermine our military preparedness, even while our national leadership tries in vain to make the case that we are a nation at war.
The Air Force, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Northern Command are planning to shut down the huge underground command bunker at Cheyenne Mountain, Colo., where U.S. nuclear war operations would be held and space and missile tracking is done.A defense official said Congress is being misled about the supposed cost savings for moving the mountain's functions to other less-protected bases.
"The real cost will be billions of dollars, and we will lose the cornerstone of the U.S. nuclear command and control facilities," said the official, who opposes the move.
Instead of placing command and tracking posts in the hardened, survivable Cheyenne Mountain, "we are going to base the deterrence for North America out of an office building."
The official said that it took years to build the current team of U.S. and Canadian military officials at Cheyenne Mountain into "the most integrated, technologically fused, state of the art system in the world."
"It is probably the Eighth Wonder of the World, but in six months it will be ripped asunder and nothing will be left," the official said. "This country will be at a risk level rarely ever seen. But it's like safety: Until something blows up, no one notices and everyone's happy. Then you hear 'how did this happen?' "
The official said an honest cost-benefit analysis was never done on closing the mountain and moving more than 250 North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command specialists to nearby Peterson Air Force Base.
The command center will be moved to a building at Peterson that is under the flight path of all commercial aircraft traffic at Colorado Springs airport and easily within target range of a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile. The same building experienced two power failures last summer that "brought Northcom to its knees" while the command center at Cheyenne Mountain continued operating under generator power, the official said.
This boggles the mind.
Posted by Alan at March 23, 2007 07:07 AM