Nuclear nerve centre vulnerable

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 16

Nuclear nerve centre vulnerable

By

ROBERT TRAUTMAN,

of Reuter, at Cheyenne Moun-

tain, Colorado

Officials at Norad, the North American Air Defence Command, which is the first line of warning of enemy attack, are increasingly worried about the fast pace of Soviet bomber and missile advances.

Their concern centres on .new low-flying Soviet cruise missiles, “Backfire” bombers being built at the rate of 30 a year with a capability of reaching the United States at least on a one-way flight, and longer-range “Blackjack” bombers under development. In addition, SSIB and SSI9 missiles deployed since the 1970 s are big and accurate enough to take out even the most hardened United States defences. The concern extends even to Norad’s nerve centre, buried 430 metres under Cheyenne Mountain, near Colorado Springs. A Norad officer said: “an SSIB or 19 could split it open.” The entrance to Norad headquarters is protected by one-metre thick steel blast doors. Each weighing 25 tonnes, they can be closed in an emergency in 45 seconds.

Inside the cavern, carved out in the early 19605, are 15 free-stand-ing steel buildings, resting on more than 1300 steel springs to protect them from a nuclear blast.

At the heart of the operations are communications lines, radar screens, and computers that bring in data swiftly on world-wide aircraft, missile, and submarine operations from reporting posts throughout North America.

Officers inside the Norad command post can bring up on one of two black-and-green screens, each four by five metres, some 15,000 different images — from a Chinese airliner on a routine flight across the United States to a Soviet missile launch or an incoming Soviet bomber.

The officials say it will be increasingly difficult to pick up these images as the radarthwarting ability of Soviet bombers and missiles improves. ‘ When Cheyenne Mountain was* built, Soviet missiles were not large or accurate enough to knock it out of operation. That has' now changed; but the officials say it would take a

missile 30 minutes to arrive from the soviet Union — 15 minutes for a submarine-launched missile — while Norad could assess the threat and report to the White House in three to five minutes.

To avoid mistakenly reporting a launch, Norad commanders insist on voice communications with the reporting radar station to confirm computer warnings of a Soviet launch.

“We are not about to make a decision on the basis of a machine,” said one officer. Another, emphasising the speed Norad insists upon, said, “when we pick up a telephone, we expect to

talk to someone at the other end — right now.” There have been some recent mistakes, but Norad officials say the fact that they were caught quickly showed that their system of checks and double-checks works.

In 1979, a test tape was accidentally fed into a computer, triggering an alarm, and in 1980 computer circuits broke down twice and sent out false warnings of missile launches.

Because these “glitches” did not go undiscovered for long, the officials are confident that mistakes could not lead to a false assessment that a Soviet attack was in progress.

“We don’t think it is possible to give a false warning,” one told

Reuter during a recent visit to the mountain.

No matter how fast and accurately warnings of a Soviet attack can reach Norad and be sent on to Washington, however, officials still see the United States falling behind Soviet advances.

To catch up, United States modernisation plans call for banks of new radars, 15 squadrons of new Fl 5 and Fl 6 fighter-interceptors, and a proposed space-based missile defence, called “star wars.”

Twelve A.W.A.C. (airborne warning and control system) radar R lanes are also being added to lorad’s defences under a $3.4billion modernisation programme. Old D.E.W. (distant early warning) radars strung across Canada, Alaska, and Greenland with dan-

gerous spaces between them are to be replaced by new, closely spaced microwave radars.

Eight “over-the-horizon” scanners, which bounce radar off the ionosphere and have a range of about 3200 kilometres are also to be installed to cover the western, eastern, and southern approaches to the United States.

Canada, a part of Norad’s defences, is sharing the cost of the new radars and replacing its old air defence aircraft The United States “star wars” defence, intended to use lasers and other new technology to detect and destroy incoming missiles before they reach the United States, has just gone into its research phase, with no date yet estimated for deployment.