America's Fortress: Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD live on

If there are two things that drive the folks at the world-famous Cheyenne Mountain complex crazy, it's the widely held public perceptions that, for one, the complex has shut down altogether, and that it is synonymous with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command.

Both perceptions, are however, quite incorrect.

For one, the Cheyenne Mountain complex is very much still operational. In some ways, in fact, in a world where existential threats come not from the Soviet Union but from things like natural disasters, cyberattacks, and amorphous terrorist organizations on the hunt for nuclear weapons, it may today even be considered more important than ever.

In its heyday, during the height of the Cold War, it was seen as the nerve centre from which U.S. military operations could still conduct business during a nuclear attack. But today, in the post-9/11 era, a whole new set of operational tenants, including U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Space Command, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Missile Defence Agency, have moved in. Secondly, while NORAD does, and has always done, business inside the mountain, its operational headquarters moved in May 2008 to the nearby Peterson Air Force Base.

Today, the NORAD mission at Cheyenne Mountain is largely related to training. "Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station is owned and operated by Air Force Space Command," the NORAD Web site explains. "In fact, NORAD and (U.S. Northern Command) use just under 30 percent of the floor space within the complex and comprise approximately 5 percent of the daily population at Cheyenne Mountain."

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