article_snippet.sent: Cheyenne Mountain Complex was home to the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD), scanning the skies for Russian missiles and the military command and control center of the United States in the event of World War Three.
article_snippet.sent: Secret: Cheyenne Mountain Complex was built for NORAD to direct the American response to a nuclear war with the USSR during the Cold War .
article_snippet.sent: Cheyenne Mountain Complex shut down nearly ten years ago as the threat from Russia seemed to subside, but this week the Pentagon announced that Cheyenne Mountain will once again be home to the most advanced tracking and communications equipment in the United States military.
article_snippet.sent: The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command's sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, military officers said.
article_snippet.sent: Admiral William Gortney, head of NORAD and Northern Command, said that 'because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain built, it's EMP-hardened.'
article_snippet.sent: Power: At its height Cheyenne Mountain was home to NORAD who watched 7,000 aircraft per day as part of 'because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain's built, it's EMP-hardened surveillance operations .
article_snippet.sent: The US and Canadian military jointly operated NORAD from within Cheyenne Mountain and soldiers from north of the border made up 15 percent of the personnel at the base .
article_snippet.sent: Around-the-clock crews monitor U.S. skies from the command center of the Northern Command  located deep within Cheyenne Mountain at the foot of the Rocky Mountains near Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2002 . '
article_snippet.sent: And so, there's a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there,' Gortney told reporters. '
article_snippet.sent: My primary concern was... are we going to have the space inside Cheyenne Mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I'm not at liberty to discuss who's moving in there,' Gortney said.
article_snippet.sent: But in 2006, officials decided to move the headquarters of NORAD and US Northern Command from Cheyenne to Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs.
article_snippet.sent: The Cheyenne mountain bunker was designated as an alternative command center if needed.
article_snippet.sent: Almost 10 years ago, the military closed the secretive defense complex carved into Cheyenne Mountain that for decades monitored American skies for threats.
article_snippet.sent: an alternative command center was moved to nearby Peterson Air Force Base, which is home to the U.S. Northern Command created after the Sept. 11 attacks.
article_snippet.sent: That, along with the emergence of varied terrorist threats such as suicide bombers, 'was why we recommended that we don't need to maintain Cheyenne Mountain in a 24/7 status.
article_snippet.sent: Canadian crews stationed at Cheyenne Mountain will also made the move to Peterson, Keating said.
article_snippet.sent: the move to Peterson was touted a more efficient use of resources but had followed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of modernization work at Cheyenne carried out after the attacks of September 11, 2001.