Military
officials earlier this month turned on the new command center, complete
with new hardware, software and big-screen displays, inside the
granite-hardened Cheyenne Mountain facility.
The operations center was built to withstand a limited nuclear strike. The facility is protected by 25-ton steel blast doors and the facility is built on springs that would help dampen the explosion. The blast doors hadn’t been closed for great length of time since the early 1970s, but they were shut Sept. 11 for almost three hours, the byproduct of a possible threat to the mountainside complex.
The event marks the
second operational capability of the Air Force’s $1.5 billion
Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) program, a 15-year
initiative to update the command and control system of Strategic
Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to
become more interoperable and support the National Command Authority
and the Canadian Chief of Defense Staff. The system warns of aircraft,
space, ballistic missile and information attacks against North America.
The
renovation of the command center, located in Colorado, occurred in two
phases. Phase 1, completed by John Bowman Inc., involved construction
of the center, a conference room and a meeting room used by the
commander and senior staff leaders. Phase 2, performed by Lockheed
Martin’s Mission Systems business unit, consisted of the design,
purchase and installation of the hardware, software and big-screen
displays, according to the NORAD statement.
Last year, Air
Force officials flipped the switch on the first of three new computer
systems inside Cheyenne Mountain called Air Mission Release 1.
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