Defense: A Mountain of Preparedness

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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.