[Building 2 may be viewed at 38.8356 N, 104.6977 W]

===================

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=42136

NORAD's new home
Posted: June 19, 2007
1:00 am Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi

Editor's note: WND columnist Jerome R. Corsi conducted an exclusive in-
depth interview with Col. Tom Muir, U.S. Army, deputy operations
officer for Command Center Operations for NORAD, the North American
Aerospace Defense Command, and USNORTHCOM, the United States Northern
Command.

Part I of the interview focuses on the rearrangement of command
facilities in Cheyenne Mountain and at Peterson Air Force Base that
have resulted from the creation of USNORTHCOM following the events of
9-11.

The 50-minute June 14 interview was transcribed as close as possible
to word-for-word, without any attempt to polish the spoken word into
more precise written prose. As a condition for the interview, WND
agreed to publish the interview completely, without editing or
editorial comment, to allow Col. Muir a full explanation of the
command structure changes involved in recent NORAD-USNORTHCOM
decisions.

Part 2 of the interview will be published tomorrow.

Jerome Corsi: The decision was announced by Admiral Timothy Keating
that the Cheyenne Mountain control facility was going to be
reconfigured and not used as the central command post for NORAD and
USNORTHCOM. I go back to the 1950s thinking of the Cheyenne Mountain
command post as the great bunkered facility in the mountain that you
see in movies like "War Games." Maybe you could start by explaining
what Admiral Keating's plan is.

Col. Tom Muir: In July 2006, Admiral Keating, the former commander of
NORAD and USNORTHCOM, announced after collaboration with congressional
leaders that we were transforming not Cheyenne Mountain, but the NORAD
and USNORTHCOM command center. The new facility is here at Building 2
at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

The decisions are about how to best conduct homeland defense for the
United States, which is the USNORTHCOM mission, and the bi-national
mission conducted by NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense
Command. That was the decision Admiral Keating announced. He believed,
as does Air Force General Victor Renuart, the current commander of
NORAD and USNORTHCOM, that we owe it to the nations, including Canada
under the NORAD bi-national command, to run the best command center
possible.

As you know, USNORTHCOM did not exist until after 9-11 when the
decision was made by the president of the United States and announced
by the secretary of defense to create a combatant command for the
homeland of the United States.

Corsi: So, how does NORAD include Canada?

Muir: NORAD is part of the bi-national agreement between the U.S. and
Canada established 49 years ago that was recently renewed in the NORAD
agreement of 2006. The agreement establishes a bi-national command,
NORAD, charged with aerospace defense and aerospace sovereignty over
the United States and Canada. In the 2006 agreement, the two nations
added a maritime warning mission as a core NORAD mission for the first
time in history.

Corsi: NORTHCOM, then, is a U.S. homeland military command?

Muir: Absolutely. NORTHCOM has a homeland defense mission in all
domains – air, land, maritime, space and missile, cyber and
information domains. Homeland defense of the United States is one of
the two NORTHCOM missions. The other mission is what we call a defense
support mission of civil authorities, which involves, for instance, a
Hurricane Katrina or a Hurricane Rita. NORTHCOM provides support to
the citizens of the United States in times of need. Those are the two-
part missions of USNORTHCOM, which were chartered after the events of
9-11.

Corsi: Does Canada play a role in NORTHCOM?

Muir: No, it does not. USNORTHCOM is a U.S.-only combatant command.
Every year the president signs what he calls a unified command plan,
which directs and establishes the authorities for operations of the
combatant commands. USNORTHCOM is responsible for the homeland defense
of the United States.

Canadian authorities several years ago made a decision to stand up
CANADA COMMAND, which resides in Ottawa. CANADA COMMAND authority is
to provide homeland defense for Canada. So, a chain of Canadian
command reports to the chief of defense staff, the minister of
national defense, and the prime minister of Canada, to defend Canada.
This is just like USNORTHCOM reports up to the U.S. secretary of
defense and the president, for the defense of the United States.

We talk on the phone and collaborate by e-mail with CANADA COMMAND,
but the two commands are separate national structures for the defense
of each country's homeland.

We work with CANADA COMMAND just like any other partner we work with.
Yesterday, for example, I was on the phone with U.S. European Command,
another combatant command of the United States. These commands are
adjacent to one another, with shared interests and shared
responsibilities. CANADA COMMAND is a Canadian organization
established by Canadian authorities to defend Canada.

You see many Canadian officers here at Peterson, but they are assigned
to NORAD, a bi-national command established by the two nations.

Corsi: Mexico does not participate in either NORAD or NORTHCOM,
correct?

Muir: That's correct, and I have no knowledge if Mexico was ever
invited to join either command.

Corsi: Within the Cheyenne Mountain command facility, NORAD was
previously centered here.

Muir: Let me see if I can break it down for you. There are really
three facilities in Cheyenne Mountain. There is Cheyenne Mountain Air
Force Station, which just like any Air Force base or Army post or
Naval installation is owned by the department. So the Department of
the Air Force has an Air Force station called Cheyenne Mountain Air
Force Station. Their job is to be the installation to support the
tenants, to host the tenant organizations that reside on their Air
Force base, just like Peterson Air Force Base hosts us here in
Colorado Springs at NORAD and NORTHCOM Headquarters.

The mountain itself is sometimes referred to as Cheyenne Mountain
physically, but the Cheyenne Mountain complex is the series of tunnels
and buildings inside the mountain that house many organizations from
all over the Department of Defense. Inside Cheyenne Mountain there
used to be a center called the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center –
CMOC you will see it referred to as.

That is the center that is now renamed the Cheyenne Mountain
Directorate that has a system of about five centers that maintain
watch over the U.S. and Canada as part of NORAD. This directorate also
serves USNORTHCOM and the U.S. strategic command USSTRATCOM. The
Cheyenne Mountain Directorate still runs centers in Cheyenne Mountain.

Corsi: The GAO identified the five major centers of the Cheyenne
Mountain Directorate as the following: Command Center, Air Warning,
Missile Correlation, Operations Intelligence Watch and Space Command.

Muir: That is accurate. You have to remember there are 15 office
buildings within Cheyenne Mountain. Much of Cheyenne Mountain is not
just centers; it's also office space. There are many tenants in that
office space. As the GAO report properly points out, the many tenants
include the Air Force space command, the U.S. strategic command, the
721st Mission Support Group, which is the installation host, plus many
other organizations that occupy office space that are not part of the
five centers you just listed.

Corsi: According to the GAO, the Air Force modernized the attack
warning systems within Cheyenne Mountain at a cost of more than $700
million from fiscal years 2000 through 2006.

Muir: I don't have the report in front of me, but the GAO findings
came as no surprise to us. We worked very closely with GAO during
their visits here and we worked closely with the team on the report
itself. So, if you are reading from the report, I assume those figures
are correct.

Corsi: I am reading from the report. It also says that Peterson Air
Force Base in Colorado Springs is the headquarters of NORAD and
USNORTHCOM. So the NORAD and USNORTHCOM headquarters are at Peterson
Air Force Base even though the Cheyenne Mountain Directorate within
Cheyenne Mountain includes these five command centers we just
identified.

Muir: You are exactly right.

Corsi: So, how then does the change that was proposed by Admiral
Keating affect this configuration? Do these command centers come out
of Cheyenne Mountain into another physical location?

Muir: What was announced by Admiral Keating and is part of our concept
is that we have found through real-world events and through exercises
that we owe the nations of U.S. and Canada the best command and
control structure possible.

The missions have evolved, such that NORAD now has a maritime mission,
and the homeland defense missions of NORTHCOM have evolved, and
certainly the events over the last several years – particularly for
that defense support of civil authorities' mission set and a lot of
NORTHCOM's concept plans and operation plans to defend the homeland
have evolved over the last several years. What we have found, and what
our analysis has shown us, and what has led to part of the decisions
by the commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM, is that it is best,
particularly for operational effectiveness and for efficiency
purposes, to co-locate many of the functions that are currently split
between the two centers.

So, there is a NORAD and NORTHCOM command center that exists here at
Peterson Air Force Base. In fact, I run it.

Building 2 [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images2/bldg2.gif]

There is a Cheyenne Mountain Directorate that runs the combined
command, as they call it. It is not the command center for NORAD; it
is not the command center for NORTHCOM; it is not the command center
for STRATCOM. It supports all three of those organizations in that
structure, as well as it supports Building 2.

The decision-makers work in Building 2, much like the national
military command center resides in the Pentagon, with the secretary of
defense, the chiefs of staff for the various military services and the
chairman of the joint chiefs working there.

So the centers are designed to produce orders to direct subordinates
to share situational awareness across what we call the many domains –
air, land, missile, space, information, and maritime domains – those
centers exist here at Building 2. The concept and the analysis that we
have done, and the GAO report talks to it, is that for operational
effectiveness purposes and what exercises and real-world events have
shown us, is that it sure does work better, particularly in this, what
we call more of a horizontal sharing of situational awareness amongst
partners, if we are all located together.

It's not a traditional military chain of command. I have been in the
military for 35 years now, and I have served in many command centers
across the globe, in both combat operations and peacetime operations.
What makes the homeland different is that the relationships are not
the straight vertical line relationships you expect in the military.
It's partnerships. It's collaboration and communications. It's sharing
situational awareness as you determine what the event is, or as the
event unfolds, so there is sharing among many partners.

Corsi: I envision Cheyenne Mountain going back to the Cold War – our
major threat was that the Soviet Union might launch a nuclear missile
attack on the continental United States. So, therefore, we built down
2,400 feet this mountain bunkered facility that would be the command
center in that kind of a missile attack, such that the facility could
survive nuclear strikes, short of maybe a direct hit.

Now, the idea that these command functions are going to come out into
the open at Peterson Air Force Base at Building 2 at first look
appears that the facilities are out in the open, possibly vulnerable
to being destroyed in an attack. It's hard to understand why we would
come out of the security of that mountain bunker out into the open
just to put these commands physically together.

Muir: Part of the challenge I think you categorize correctly. Cheyenne
Mountain was built for a specific purpose. It was built for a very
straightforward function, what we call integrated tactical warning and
attack assessment. But even that has changed over the years, when you
think about it. The threat from the former Soviet Union or the Warsaw
Pact at the time never envisioned the use of hijacked commercial
airplanes to attack American citizens. So, the mission of integrated
tactical warning and attack assessment has evolved over time to meet
the threats of today and the threats of tomorrow.

Does that mean you discount probably the most catastrophic threats?
The answer is, of course not. You should not, and our analysis shows
us that we will not. What you have to do is to adapt your structures
so that you are meeting the threats of today and tomorrow.

Let me give you an example. During the hurricane season of 2005, the
tragic hurricanes of Rita and Katrina, the president came here to
Peterson Air Force Base and spent two days at the NORAD and NORTHCOM
command center, understanding our nation's response to the hurricanes,
understanding from the state to the federal level, to the inter-agency
to the Department of Defense response. It was a holistic look at the
threat, if you can define a hurricane as a threat – it certainly
announces it is coming – and the nation's response to that threat in
order to protect the citizens of the United States. That was all run
out of Peterson Air Force Base, out of the NORAD-NORTHCOM command
center.

We talked earlier about the maritime mission as an evolving, new
mission for NORAD, just after the 2006 NORAD agreement. That maritime
mission for NORAD is performed out of the NORAD-NORTHCOM command
center at Peterson Air Force Base.

So, in reference to Cheyenne Mountain, there are no decisions, no
actions, that will jeopardize what you certainly categorized as
probably our most dangerous, in terms of catastrophic threat, even if
it is not necessarily the most likely threat. But we are going to
continue to maintain the world-class facilities at Cheyenne Mountain.

So, you talk about functions leaving Cheyenne Mountain. I can tell you
that some of the watch-standers that perform functions will be doing
that down here at Peterson. Many of the systems and architectures that
our nation relies upon will still be in Cheyenne Mountain. If the
threat requires, in other words if there are strategic warnings and
indications, or in fact we're going to routinely exercise it as well,
that causes us to decide it's just not safe enough for us other here
in Peterson, we'll have the capability to relocate to Cheyenne
Mountain. But this time we will have the capability to bring all the
command structures of NORAD-NORTHCOM, not just the ones that are done
there today.

So, when Admiral Keating announced the transformation, and when
General Renuart has publicly spoken about our ability to do all
missions to support the citizens of the United States and Canada, that
is what this transformation is all about. It's not about stuff moving
down or moving out and then being vacant. It's about operational
effectiveness to meet the threats of today and tomorrow.