Thread: Why Is The Pentagon Beefing Up A Mountain Stronghold?

Iran


Why Is The Pentagon Beefing Up A Mountain Stronghold?

2:32 PM 04/08/2015JONAH BENNETT
Reporter, Daily Caller News Foundation

The Pentagon is moving its missile monitoring equipment deep into Cheyenne Mountain to avoid the effects of an electromagnetic pulse attack which would render NORAD helpless.

Admiral William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, stated on Tuesday that the reason officials decided on the cavernous Cheyenne Mountain is because it’s naturally hardened against devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, Defense One reports.

Gortney’s remarks add clarity to the contract announcement last week, in which the Pentagon awarded defense contractor Raytheon $700 million dollars to place new equipment in the mountain. The contract lasts until 2020. Raytheon is set to assist the military in providing “accurate, timely and unambiguous warning and attack assessment of air, missile and space threats.”

Based in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Cheyenne has a long history. During the Cold War, the half-acre cavern inside the mountain was specifically engineered in the 1960s to carry on activities in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. Those activities included the ability to send signals to U.S. nuclear facilities to launch a response if necessary.

“My primary concern was: ‘Are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody that wants to move in there?’ … but we do have that capability,”Gortney said, according to AFP.

Vulnerability to EMPs has been growing over past decades because of the military’s increasing reliance on computer networks. EMPs can result from nuclear attacks. The Pentagon is also conducting its own research to design weapons that would render inoperable the electronic equipment of its opposition.

In 2006, NORAD moved the command center from Cheyenne to Peterson Air Force Base, but the recent decision suggests the Pentagon is placing far more importance on the EMP-thwarting capabilities of the mountain.

“A lot of the back office communications is being moved there,” one defense official told AFP.

The main command center will still remain at Peterson.

Over the past several years, former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich has warned that EMP attacks could “throw all of our lives back to an existence equal to that of the Middle Ages.” According to Gingrich, millions would die in the first week of the attack, and what’s worse is that the U.S. is not taking the threats, which parallel nuclear strikes from North Korea and Iran, very seriously.

Skeptics have attacked Gingrich for sounding unnecessary alarms. But the Pentagon’s reinvestment in Cheyenne suggests that the tide of opinion in government defense circles may be shifting to line up with Gingrich’s assessment of the risks posed by EMP technology.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/08/wh...in-stronghold/

An intercontinental ballistic missile is able to deliver an emp attack. They don't have to hit a city, and emp takes out everything electrical. The President's deal allows Iran to continue their program.
Iran endorses nuclear EMP attack on United States

BY PAUL BEDARD |
MARCH 19, 2015 | 11:46 AM

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, second right in first row, visits a defense industry display. AP...Suspected for years of plotting to dismantle the U.S. electric grid, American officials have confirmed that Iranian military brass have endorsed a nuclear electromagnetic pulse explosion that would attack the country's power system.

American defense experts made the discovery while translating a secret Iranian military handbook, raising new concerns about Tehran's recent nuclear talks with the administration.



Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, attends a graduation ceremony of army cadets, accompanied by Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, left, Chief of the General Staff of Iran's Armed Forces, Hasan Firouzabadi, second left in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Oct. 5 2013. (AP Photo/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)

The issue of a nuclear EMP attack was raised in the final hours of this week's elections in Israel when U.S. authority Peter Vincent Pry penned a column for Arutz Sheva warning of Iran's threat to free nations.

RELATED: Iran nuclear talks push against deadline

"Iranian military documents describe such a scenario — including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States," he wrote.

A knowledgable source said that the textbook discusses an EMP attack on America in 20 different places.

Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks, who is leading an effort to protect the U.S. electric grid from an EMP attack, has recently made similar claims based on the document translated by military authorities.

Once sneered at by critics, recent moves by Iran and North Korea have given credibility to the potential EMP threat from an atmospheric nuclear explosion over the U.S.

Pry has suggested ways for Iran to deliver a nuclear attack: by ship launched off the East Coast, a missile or via satellite.
Either way the result could be destruction of all or part of the U.S. electric grid, robbing the public of power, computers, water and communications for potentially a year.

RELATED: Is Iran playing the U.S. in the nuclear talks?

Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, said the threat to the grid can also come from solar activity.
He has been pushing Washington and state governments to take the relatively inexpensive move to protect the electric grid, though his concern is from a nuclear attack by Iran or North Korea.

"It is increasingly frightening," he said. "We have to get started on this."

He noted that Iran's top military leader recently announced that he was ready for war with the U.S.

"We are ready for the decisive battle against the U.S. and the Zionist regime," Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Hassan Firouzabadi told Iran's Fars News Agency in 2014.

Below is from Pry's column that discusses an Iran EMP attack:

Iran armed with nuclear missiles poses an unprecedented threat to global civilization.

One nuclear warhead detonated at high-altitude over the United States would blackout the national electric grid and other life sustaining critical infrastructures for months or years by means of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). A nationwide blackout lasting one year, according to the Congressional EMP Commission, could cause chaos and starvation that leaves 90 percent of Americans dead.

Iranian military documents describe such a scenario--including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States.

Thus, Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell for Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom. For the first time in history, a failed state like Iran could destroy the most successful societies on Earth and convert an evolving benign world order into world chaos.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted atpbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ir...rticle/2561733

Cheyenne Mountain Complex

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the mountain itself, see Cheyenne Mountain.

Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs, Colorado, El Paso County, Colorado 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W Coordinates: 38°44′32.91″N 104°50′54.40″W
Site history
Built	May 18, 1961–February 8, 1966
In use	Cheyenne Mountain Complex[1]:14 NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex (January 20, 1965)[1]:14

The Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a military installation and nuclear bunker located in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station,^[a] which hosts the activities of several tenant units. Also located in Colorado Springs is the Peterson Air Force Base, where the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) headquarters are located.^[5]

Contents

• 1 Overview
• 2 Facilities
  
  • 2.1 Main chambers
  • 2.2 Blast doors
  • 2.3 Outdoor
  • 2.4 Support area
  
  
• 3 History
  
  • 3.1 Construction and systems installation
  • 3.2 Operations and improvements
    
    • 3.2.1 Air Defense Command satellite systems
    • 3.2.2 Ballistic Missile Defense Center
    • 3.2.3 Combat Operations Center
    • 3.2.4 Space Defense Operations Center
    • 3.2.5 Cheyenne Mountain Complex Improvements Program (427M)
    • 3.2.6 Joint Surveillance System
    • 3.2.7 Survivable Communications Integration System
    • 3.2.8 Other systems
    
    
  • 3.3 Peterson and Vandenberg Air Force Bases
  • 3.4 NORAD Alternate Command
  
  
• 4 Units
• 5 In popular culture
• 6 See also
• 7 Notes
• 8 References
• 9 External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex