Regarding The Gazette's April 7 Our View, "Is NORAD safe?". The Gazette is certainly entitled to its opinion. Sadly, the opinion is not supported by fact. The truth is NORAD and USNORTHCOM has instituted many upgrades to our security here at Peterson Air Force Base and at Building 2, most of which are classified. We continue further upgrades.

I understand the importance of this issue to the Colorado Spring's community, to our nation, and to our bi-national partner Canada and I did not make the decision to duplicate elements of the NORAD ops center to our NORAD-NORTHCOM Command Center at Peterson Air Force Base lightly.

Cheyenne Mountain remains an important alternate command and training center for our commands. We utilize it every day and will continue to do so. However, the threats of the 21st century are different than those we faced when Cheyenne Mountain became operational. That's the sobering truth. In this post-Cold War era, This era where our adversaries take advantage of seams and gaps in legacy systems, we have to be think beyond a Cold War mentality. We have to design and build command and information systems that are resilient, redundant, and distributed and allow us to act quickly and decisively with no single point of failure.

I have listened to the concerns of congressional and local leaders. As I have discussed with them, for the first time ever, the combined command center provides a common operational picture of the complementary missions of both North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. This enables national decision-makers to maximize synergy in collaboration with federal, state, and local mission partners. We see this every day in events like the North Korean missile test, flood support in North Dakota, the Cessna 172 event and the plethora of other events we monitor each day that have the potential of becoming a national security event. And of course, should the unthinkable become a reality, NORAD and USNORTHCOM continues to provide the same level of homeland defense capabilities for the nation it always has.

Survivability is no longer defined by how deeply underground our systems are buried, but how efficiently those systems work to prevent and deter acts of aggression targeting American citizens. Indeed, our citizens all deserve to know the truth regarding their security, and the truth is we have worked diligently to respond to all questions or concerns as they have been brought to our attention.

Gen. Gene Renuart
Commander, NORAD and USNORTHCOM
Colorado Springs

Friends of NORAD and USNORTHCOM,

 

It’s been an exciting last 72 hrs.  These last 3 days have shown the importance of our NORAD and NORTHCOM Command Center as we quickly shifted focus and effort from our civil support operation in North Dakota to our Homeland Defense responsibilities. 

 

As you have probably seen in the press, on Saturday night we were closely monitoring and assessing the threat of the North Korean launch of a Taepo Dong TD-2 missile.  NORAD assessed the space launch vehicle as not a threat to North America and USNORTHCOM took no action in response to the launch.  Make no mistake, this combined effort is enhanced by our combined NORAD and USNORTHCOM Command Center (N2C2), which allows for a significantly better unity of effort between the commands.

 

Finally, NORAD was very much involved in the assessing and tracking of the Cessna that flew last night from Canada into the United States.  While many in the media wanted to talk about “rules of engagement” and “shoot down authorities” this puts this actual situation into the wrong context.  The reality is that NORAD fighters respond frequently to situations like this nearly every week and we will continue to do so to ensure the safety and security of Canada and the United States.

 

Thanks for all that you do to help tell our story and do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions or concerns. 

 

Cheers -- Gene