'Sensitive' documents indicate Cheyenne Mountain's better for NORAD (tags)
John Pike, a leading defense expert and director of globalsecurity.org, says NorthCom's transition from the mountain is a "little difficult to understand," given that the nation has nuclear missiles ready to launch on "hair-trigger alert." "Where the hell do they think they'll be getting the alert from?" he says of the transition to the Peterson Building 2 basement. Pike also is puzzled by the move of Air Force Space Command's space control to Vandenberg, since the military in the past has argued that the expensive upgrades at the mountain required space and missile tracking systems to be "co-located," to avoid confusion that space debris could be incoming munitions, or vice versa.