Cheyenne Mountain is slated for closure. The famous nuke-proof bunker buried 2000 feet under a Colorado mountain, Cheyenne has long been known as the HQ for NORAD, America's leading air and missile defense organization. Completed in 1964, Cheyenne is now being mothballed, in part for managerial reasons, and in part because the facility's underground location makes it difficult to expand. But the drive for improved operational efficiency will entail a decrease in physical security. Reuters explains why:

Construction on a new command center 12 miles away at Peterson Air Force Base is well under way despite security concerns that have driven some lawmakers to consider halting funding for the transition.

The move will shift more than 100 people responsible for detecting attacks on North America from a facility that sits under 2,000 feet of granite to a basement in an office building on the base that officials concede offers lower protection.

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, the U.S. commander responsible for homeland defense and protecting North American air space, says the switch is worth the risk of leaving a facility built to withstand the indirect effects of a multi-megaton nuclear blast.

It will combine operations now divided between Cheyenne and Peterson, helping the commander to receive information and respond to crises or attacks more quickly, Renuart said. It will not, however, save money as the military promised, congressional investigators have shown.

Renuart said the plan was the best way to make the most of resources currently split between the two Colorado locations.

"We can't accommodate all of that integrated command and control capability in the mountain," he said. "And so it makes sense to have that put in place where we can get the best unity of all of that effort, and that really is down here at Peterson."

He said using communications technologies to link the two centers was no substitute for having everyone in one place. [...]

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of harm to their careers, [some officials] say the new command center at Peterson cannot be protected from nuclear, chemical or biological attack and its systems will not be sufficiently hardened against an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear blast overhead.

A former senior defense official who led Pentagon efforts to close unneeded military bases said Cheyenne is one of just three facilities the United States should never close.

"Given the uncertainty of the future threat and the value of protected operation sites, that move seems to be excessively risky," said David Berteau, now a consultant with Washington firm Clark & Weinstock.