-Caveat Lector- U.S. Cold War bastion gets new lease on life By Jim Wolf CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, Colo., Oct 20 (Reuters) - This fabled lookout for death from above, which once symbolised U.S. fear of communism, is gearing up for new threats. The bunker complex was built in the early 1960s on giant springs to cushion the ancient computers' vacuum tubes from the shock of an atom bomb dropped by a long-range Soviet bomber. Today the glowing blue monitors no longer simulate threats from Russia. For the past seven months, imaginary intercontinental ballistic missiles streak across them toward U.S. cities from China. ``Sir, for the exercise, we have multiple missile launches,'' says a recorded voice in the dim light of the command centre as a canned presentation for visitors begins. Yellow arcs spread across out-sized monitors before being confirmed as ``combat against North America.'' The simulation ends with hits -- 32 to 36 minutes after launch -- on Seattle, Colorado Springs, Detroit, New York and Washington. The unspoken message: the United States is defenceless against such a blitz, which could rain down nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. In real life China and its 20 long-range missiles are not seen by U.S. nuclear planners as the main threat to post-Cold War U.S. national security. That still would be Russia, with its uncertain future and 2,000 nuclear-tipped missiles on launch-within-minutes alert. But here at the hub of the U.S. sky watch, the simulated Chinese ballistic-missile strike seems to stand also for the perceived threat from North Korea, Iraq, Iran and guerrilla financiers like Osama bin Laden. To track missile launches, Cheyenne Mountain draws on a global web of satellites, radar systems and other sensors to give the earliest possible warning of any threat to North American air space. The farthest-flung element is a handful of Defence Support Programme satellites -- the exact number is secret -- said capable of detecting the heat of a Soviet-designed SCUD missile launch from 22,300 miles (36,800 kms) in space. Ever poised to retaliate, the United States fields 2,440 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert, including Trident missiles aboard 18 submarines and 550 intercontinental ballistic missiles buried in silos. MOUNTAIN IS HOME TO NORAD The ``Mountain'' is home to NORAD, the bi-national, U.S.-Canadian, North American Aerospace Defence Command, which recently completed a five-year, $1.8 billion upgrade to its air, space, missile-tracking and command-centre elements. Now the Pentagon is getting set to launch a giant systems-integration project, setting the stage for a proposed shield to protect the United States from limited missile attack by a ``rogue regime.'' The work will tie about 40 air, space and missile systems into a single, integrated command and control system -- the biggest modernisation since the complex became fully operational on Jan. 1, 1966. The Air Force, which owns Cheyenne Mountain, has described the job as akin to ``changing an engine in flight'' -- meaning there can be no downtime for systems scanning the skies. Competing for the contract -- valued at another $1.8 billion over 15 years -- are teams headed by TRW Inc., Lockheed Martin, Boeing Co. and Raytheon Co. It is expected to be awarded by next summer when President Bill Clinton is to decide on deploying the proposed missile-intercept network, a spinoff from President Ronald Reagan's ``Star Wars'' concept. NORAD commander Gen. Richard Myers of the Air Force -- nominated last week by Clinton to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- has said a ``key assumption'' of national missile defence planning was that its nerve centre would piggyback on current Cheyenne Mountain missions. The complex -- 15 steel buildings on a 4-1/2 acre (1.8 hectares) grid hollowed out of the granite mountain by 1.5 million pounds (0.675 kg) of dynamite -- does not track only space and missile launches. It also works with the U.S. Customs Department to counter drug-running. NORAD maintains some 20 fighter aircraft along North America's perimeters on 24-hour alert, ready to scramble if needed to identify an unknown aircraft, said Army Capt. Jeffrey Dean, chief of presentations at the mountain. Another mission: tracking 8,134 man-made objects in orbit today, only 5 percent of them working satellites. A key goal is to protect costly programmes like the space shuttle from orbiting debris, some as small as a six-inch (15.24 cms) bolt. FABLED WAR ROOM Maj. Gen. David Bartram of Canada, NORAD'S director of operations, said he and his colleagues were ``rarely surprised'' by a missile launch. ``The intelligence network provides us a pretty good indication of what's happening around the world,'' he said in an interview in the command centre -- the functional equivalent of war rooms in films like ``Dr. Strangelove,'' ``Fail-Safe,'' and ``WarGames.'' By his side were ``hot lines'' to the national command authorities of the United States and Canada. The centre, contrary to the Hollywood treatment, seats no more than 10 people. Among the information displayed were the whereabouts of the president, vice president, prime minister and top brass. In 1980 a ``multiplexer'' chip failed in a Nova 840 computer and sent a false missile alarm to NORAD, the second such incident in less than a year, Dean acknowledged. Former CIA Director Robert Gates, who worked on the staffs of four presidents, described in his memoirs the resultant scares. The error was detected only ``one minute'' before then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had planned to tell President Jimmy Carter of a NORAD alert that 2,200 Soviet missiles had been launched against the United States. Brzezinski had been ``convinced we had to hit back'' and had told his military aide ``to confirm that the Strategic Air Command was launching its planes,'' Gates wrote in his 1996 book, ``From the Shadows.'' ``It had been a false alarm. Someone had mistakenly put military exercise tapes into the computer system,'' wrote Gates. Inside the bunker -- equipped so 700 people could work for a month without opening the blast-proof, 25-ton (tonne) steel doors -- Dean said an error like that would never happen again because of safeguards walling off drills from ``the real world side.'' Gen. Bartram said NORAD had left no stone unturned to make sure its systems sail through the Year 2000 technology challenge. In addition, redundancies and backup plans were ready in case ``anything untoward or unexpected should happen (to NORAD systems) -- which I'm fairly confident it won't.'' DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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