The Admiral cut more than the cake.
As NORAD leaves Cheyenne Mountain, some worry it's a dangerous mistake
by Michael de Yoanna
The sun setting on Cheyenne Mountain has been a loaded metaphor since plans emerged to scatter NORAD operations elsewhere.
An executive jet filled with fuel and explosives suddenly veers off its approach to a runway at Colorado Springs Municipal Airport.
Its terrorist pilot is on a suicide mission.
His target is a glass-front office building on Peterson Air Force Base.
It's not just any building. It is the new headquarters of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, as well as U.S. Northern Command.
Operators in the office building, charged with preventing just such an attack, detect the plane's motives.
But they have, at best, 10 seconds to react — too little time.
The plane smashes into the building, and the early-warning systems go down, disrupting the flow of critical information to the president and temporarily crippling the nation's ability to respond to any other attacks.
This fearsome scenario, outlined by a former high-ranking military officer intimately familiar with the security situation, is possible if operations at Cheyenne Mountain are moved to what's known as Peterson Building 2.
Some aspects of the move already are underway; commanders say a full transition could happen within a year.
Recently retired U.S. Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado Springs is among those with grave concerns. Noting the building's close proximity to roads, he invokes the 1995 bombing of a government building in Oklahoma.
"If you can do what you can do in Oklahoma City with some fertilizer, imagine what you can do with some of the high-tech weapons now," says Hefley, who, as Republican chairman of the House military readiness subcommittee, sought answers to myriad questions — without success.
Months later, his replacement on the subcommittee, Democratic Rep. Solomon Ortiz, continues to ask why operations should be moved out of a mountain hailed as the world's best bunker.
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The same former officer also alleges that even while NORAD/NorthCom's former commander, Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, cited financial reasons for pushing for the change last year, investigators were revealing that the government had already poured more than $700 million into a largely unsuccessful effort to upgrade the mountain's capabilities — $240 million more than planned.
China anti-satellite test sends wrong signal
(Reuters)
12 May 2007
BEIJING - The new head of the US Pacific Command said on Saturday that China’s anti-satellite test sent a ‘confusing signal’ about its military intentions, adding he would use his post to push for deeper exchange and openness between the countries’ forces.
Adm. Timothy Keating, who took the helm of the Pacific Command two months ago, said Guo Boxiong, the vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, emphasised to him that Beijing’s intentions in the test were purely scientific.
But he said other countries saw the January missile strike against one of its own satellites as having military overtones.
‘We agreed, each of us, to hold to our different perspectives,’ Keating told reporters.
‘An anti-satellite test is not necessarily a clear indication of a desire for peaceful utilisation of space. It is a confusing signal, shall we say, for a country who desires, in China’s words, a peaceful rise.’
China’s military modernisation and expanding defence budget have been a source of friction with the United States, which has called for more transparency and warned that a build-up of forces could be destabilising to Northeast Asia.
But Keating, who will visit the 179th army brigade in the eastern city of Nanjing on Sunday, said more of those kinds of exchanges would increase exposure and understanding between the two nations.
