A Mountain of Preparedness

In the darkened room, the high command of the battle staff sits wordlessly behind orange consoles. Faces reflect an eerie glow from flickering television screens and panels of lighted buttons.

A general calls out a command. At his side, a "display specialist" punches one button, then another; his fingers race across his varicolored panel filled with the flashing lights of disaster (see oppo site page). An outline map of the North American continent is traced in light across a large screen. Near the top, along the rim of the Arctic Ocean, clusters of lights -- signifying hostile missiles -- begin to move perceptibly southward.

Computers calculate their impact points; ominous yellow symbols flash above Chicago, Washington, New York, Detroit. The general reaches for a phone and a nearby communications specialist goes through the motions of connecting him with the President of the United States.

This was the scene as NORAD officers checked and rechecked the complex internal communications network, the massed computers with their split-second memories, the radios, the cameras -- all the paraphernalia of modern technology that is crammed into the new Combat Operations Center (COC) of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Buried deep inside Colorado's 9,565-ft. Cheyenne Mountain, protected against any predictable hazards --from enemy sabotage to a direct hit by a nuclear bomb--the nearly completed COC, opened for press inspection this week, is scheduled to go into full operation in April, replacing the present more vulnerable one located at Ent Air Force Base, 13 miles away.

What with the war in Viet Nam and the mellowing of the Russians, nobody has been talking much of late about massive attacks on the U.S. itself. But the military, helped by its scientific colleagues, has not been negligent. The mountain stronghold will become the nerve center for a joint U.S.-Canadian defensive force that has the responsibility of detecting any bomber or missile attack on the North American continent and directing the defense.

Computer Digestion. To carry out his mission, NORAD's commander, General Dean C. Strother, 57, can muster a force of more than 100,000 men, a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS, pronounced bemuse) that stretches from Alaska to England, squadrons of missile-armed jet fighters, and flocks of Bomarc, Hawk and Nike-Hercules ground-to-air missiles. By its very definition, NORAD is a defensive force; by very obvious design, it adds immeasurably to the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Its buried COC is designed to survive any sneak attack; its trained staff will be able to make almost instantaneous assessment of continent-wide damage while alerting U.S. and Canadian missiles and bombers. The name of the game is defense. But the payoff for the aggressor is swift and terrible retaliation.

To maintain its vast surveillance system and uninterrupted communication with a network of planes, bases and radar stations, NORAD has installed 13 computers--each with its own job, each able to bail out any of the others in case of trouble. Those computers, with their intricate mix of sophisticated electronic aids, represent a new generation of automated information. Data from a BMEWS station in Alaska, for example, or a message from a Navy antisubmarine patrol plane, is fed into the banked computer memory drums and onto the glowing display consoles without ever passing through human hands or brains. So fast are some of the systems, they work in what scientists and engineers call "real time." Between the observation of an event, its digestion by the computers and its display for the staff in the COCpit, there is an insignificant delay that can be measured in millionths of a second.

By simply pressing buttons, NORAD officers can electronically scan the entire North American continent and its distant approaches; they can track on the screens before them the flight of missiles or planes, friendly or hostile. They can, in COC jargon, "build up" a picture that includes patterns of probable radioactive fallout and areas that have been destroyed or made uninhabitable by nuclear, chemical or even biological weapons. On their console television screens, they can flash up-to-the-minute weather reports from any area of North America, the status of defensive fighters and missiles, the positions of orbiting satellites and space debris (so that they will not be mistaken for missiles), even the number of rounds of ammunition available to jet fighters at a remote Alaskan airbase.

A NORAD officer with a significant combination of symbols built up on his console can transmit his "display" to any other console screen in the center or, within seconds, have it projected on the large screen for everyone to see. By pointing a narrow beam from a light gun at an area of particular interest on his console screen, an operator can enlarge that area 16-fold or cause it to flash on and off on other screens to alert the rest of the staff.

Direct Nuclear Hit. Little is left to human error. Should no one notice a major development, or should a number of seemingly unrelated minor developments signify trouble, electronic brains set off flashing lights, ring bells, and sound other assorted alarms. On one switch box where alarms are manually triggered, a NORAD operator has already taped a crude sign: "Don't push buttons. It makes a real offensive noise."

So complete and complex a system can tolerate no delay in data transmitted from widely separated stations--from distant radar sites in northern Canada, from strategically situated Bomarc bases, from Navy planes cruising high off both coasts. To keep its electronic marvels nourished even after a direct nuclear hit on Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD has installed six different communications systems, each capable of carrying the entire message load. There are four widely separated and deeply buried land transmission cables leading out of the COC; there is a low-frequency radio system that transmits directly through the earth and a microwave system with two antennas--each encased in a concrete shell and placed on opposite sides of the mountain so that one blast could not destroy them both. In addition, the building's steel walls provide shielding for electronic equipment against damage from the powerful electromagnetic effects of a nuclear explosion.

NORAD is also prepared for accidental disruptions of its complex communications system. If a telephone-line signal drops in volume, the system will automatically correct itself. If a line is broken, electronic sensors will locate the break and reroute messages until it has been corrected. If a storm sops up too much energy from the microwave radio system when it is broadcasting on a particular wave length, an electronic feedback device will change the frequency--and thus the wave length--of the transmission.

Mammoth Springs. With its redundant equipment, imaginative design and sturdy construction, the man-made intelligence that pulses in the heart of Cheyenne Mountain seems to function with an assurance that is almost superhuman. But beyond the electronic logic of the computers there is always a human brain; a human mind must make the final decision, human fingers must punch the buttons that control the country's defense.

The combination of startling equipment and skilled men is housed in eleven yellow and green steel buildings located in a grid of tunnels 1,400 ft. below the mountaintop. To protect both men and equipment against the shock of a nearby blast or earthquake, the buildings are set on rows of mammoth springs (each four feet high and made of three-inch diameter steel) and hydraulic damper cylinders that compress noticeably as more equipment and furniture are moved in. Because some buildings sag lower than others, connecting walkways and heating ducts are flexible, and can shift up, down or sideways depending on the movement of the buildings.

Though the COC complex is located far inside the mountain, thousands of feet from the entrances of the two access tunnels that lead to it, two 30-ton steel doors have been installed to seal its entrance corridor against possible nuclear blast. To guard against the effects of a sneak attack, the 3-ft.-thick doors are interlocked electrically so that only one can open at a time. Should outside sensors detect a sudden blast, a hydraulic system will close the open door in 30 seconds--before the shock wave can sweep down the access tunnel.

Once sealed in after an attack, the regular NORAD crew of about 300, along with the hundreds of additional military and civilian technicians who work in the mountain, could survive for more than 30 days without help. The COC's "Environmental Control System" makes it all but self-sufficient.

Though outside air is immediately cut off to avoid radioactive contamination, the inside air is passed through a filtering and recirculating system that keeps it pure. Subterranean reservoirs within the complex hold 1,400,000 gallons of water for human consumption, another 4,100,000 for cooling the six diesel generators that supply COC's electrical needs. There are small sleeping rooms with two three-decker bunk beds each, a dining room, a hospital with operating room and dentist chair, even electric washing machines and dryers.

Mushroom Gardens. While the only weapons in sight at Cheyenne Mountain are the guns of the military police, the highly specialized community quite obviously exists only to react to a deadly crisis; it works in a strange kind of isolation that could suddenly be extended for weeks--and inevitably, a grim kind of humor has evolved among its sophisticated cave men. The NORAD staff talks of replacing the decorative flowers and greenery in COC offices with sunless "victory gardens" devoted to mushrooms. One console operator refers to an electric typewriter that automatically records the data shown on his screen as "the Pearl Harbor file provision," which he promises to use "to show that it was not my fault."

The Cheyenne Mountain complex has been under construction since 1961, when excavators bored two main tunnels into the 7,000-ft. level and began blasting out 469,000 cu. yds. of granite. A major problem developed in 1963, when the diggers reached the planned location of the command-post building. There the contractors discovered a system of faults, or shear lines, that dangerously reduced the protective strength of the overlying granite. To remedy nature's faults, the construction crews put together a reinforced concrete dome 45 ft. in diameter, pushing against the roof of the cavern. They supported it with four huge concrete columns resting on an inverted dome on the floor below. Thus the weight of the mountaintop above the fault was transferred through the domes and columns to the underlying rock as a guard against the possibility of collapse.

To protect personnel against falling chips of rock, more than 400,000 sq. ft. of chain-link fabric--a kind of superstrength chicken wire--was fastened to the rock walls and ceiling.

For all the careful planning, tremendous effort, and the $142 million poured into Cheyenne Mountain, its direct value to U.S. defense in an age of intercontinental ballistic missiles remains difficult to measure. The electronic wizardry of the underground COC will speed the detection of enemy planes and missiles and allow swifter interception of hostile aircraft, but there is no weapon in the current U.S. arsenal--and there will be none in the near future--that can intercept incoming ICBMs. What NORAD's defense network delivers is more time--and time is of indefinable value. "How much is, say, 3 1/2 minutes worth in terms of survivability?" asks a NORAD chief.

What NORAD's deterrent effect amounts to is something else again. Far from cloaking the new COC in secrecy, the Air Force seems bent on letting the world in on its every detail. This week's press tours include many foreigners. A large sign has been erected beside a highway near Cheyenne Mountain blatantly informing motorists that they are approaching the heart of North America's air-defense system. The message to trigger-happy aggressors should be as obvious as that roadside sign: NORAD's invulnerable new mountain of preparedness guards some of the most impressive products of modern science and technology. And with the aid of some of the most sophisticated gadgetry in the world, the COC promises immediate and devastating retaliation for any attack on the U.S.

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