The U.S. military’s mountain bunker along Colorado’s Front Range, built during the Cold War to survive a Soviet nuclear attack, now must withstand scrutiny by lawmakers who see it as a costly relic. They question the need for a not-so-secret command post cocooned in 2,000 feet of granite. It sits inside Cheyenne Mountain, where North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) crews in front of a large map can scan skies and track missile and satellite launches around the planet, along with potentially disruptive space junk. The bunker also houses, behind 23-ton blast doors, a power plant, water supply, food stores, a health clinic, a barber shop, and a chapel. Military crews at the Buckley Space Force Base east of Denver and at Peterson Space Force Base east of Colorado Springs perform the same missions at a lower cost. And U.S. officials 18 years ago relegated the mountain facility to “warm standby” status. Yet, over the past decade, the government has been modernizing the facility and, in 2021, renamed it the Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station. “We spend large amounts of money on systems and facilities that do not match the threats that we are facing and that are evolving around the world,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, D-Aurora, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “What are the threats? What is the capability we need to address the threats? Sometimes, the right capability is a lot cheaper,” Crow said. A soldier walks into the mouth of the tunnel at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, since renamed Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, in this file photo from May 10, 2018, in Colorado Springs. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Military proponents say a resilient, granite-shielded capacity for detecting Russian and Chinese threats in space is necessary. “You might walk in and think you’re still back in the 1950s and ’60s. The design of it hasn’t changed. You feel like you’re walking into a time capsule. But it has been modernized, including all the communications systems and all the networking systems needed to do our job effectively,” NORAD Col. Cory Kwasny said. The mountain site “gives you an added layer of security. “It is not a museum piece, not something sitting here mothballed, waiting for a new purpose or a new life. It is being used daily.” In this file photo from May 10, 2018, covers sit over equipment in the Command Center during a media tour at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, which has since been renamed Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) NORAD and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) post skeleton crews in the mountain to keep the place ready for training exercises and occasional conflict simulations to test readiness. More than a dozen other federal agencies also are using the mountain. U.S. Space Force officials declined to discuss their activities. A press release in November celebrated the installation of 3,000 feet of “redundant fiber optic cable” to ensure worldwide communications for “space and missile defense missions.” The Buckley and Peterson bases where sky-scanning is done at lower cost are “vulnerable to missiles and drones,” said Riki Ellison, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. While he estimated the expense as “multiple times” more, Ellison favored the modernization of Cheyenne Mountain as a protected facility. “We have to have backup,” he said. High costs were a factor in military leaders’ 2006 decision to place Cheyenne Mountain on “warm standby” status — ready if necessary. The Department of Defense over the past decade has been spending at least tens of millions of dollars a year on the facility, a Denver Post review of contracting notices found. In 2015, U.S. defense officials announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon to move NORAD communications systems back into Cheyenne Mountain to increase protection against potential electromagnetic pulse attacks. This month, they sought bids for a $48 million project involving “electromagnetic interference managers,” according to contracting notices. In September, they awarded a $671,000 contract to maintain and improve water supply treatment in the mountain. In July, they awarded a $51 million contract for improved missile warning technology. Government spending on three space force bases in Colorado — Peterson, Schriever and the Cheyenne Mountain bunker — has reached $2.5 billion a year, according to a 2021 Space Force summary. Space Force officials did not respond to requests for a breakdown. For decades, congressional lawmakers have questioned the role of the mountain facility, which originally cost $142 million and opened in 1967, said Richard Marsh, deputy command historian for NORAD and NORTHCOM. The original idea was defense following the Soviet Union’s 1949 detonation of a nuclear bomb. However, the threat of Soviet bombers attacking soon was eclipsed by the development of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). U.S. strategists by the late 1960s “already recognized that, once the Soviet ICBMs became accurate enough,” the mountain bunker “was not going to provide the level of protection it was originally built to provide,” Marsh said. “They recognized it wasn’t going to be impervious.” It’s located at the southwest edge of Colorado Springs. A one-third-mile tunnel through granite leads into a 4.5-acre hollowed-out area where three-story buildings sit atop giant springs. A large door, when locked, keeps the outside world out at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, since renamed to Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, in this file photo from May 10, 2018, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Related Articles Colorado News | Editorial: Coloradans, unite to keep Space Command in Colorado Springs Colorado News | Fear of losing U.S. Space Command unites Colorado’s congressional delegation Colorado News | What Trump’s second term means for Colorado immigrants, public lands, abortion access and Space Command U.S. defense chiefs testifying in Congress have warned repeatedly that China and Russia have tested anti-satellite weapons. They’ve prioritized “space control” and missile tracking capabilities. While the costs versus benefits of modernizing the Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station haven’t been fully determined, resilience in the face of new threats will be crucial, said Bruce McClintock, senior policy researcher and space enterprise program director for RAND, an independent think tank. “We need multiple backups,” McClintock said. “Our adversaries are so capable that we need to make sure we have an infrastructure web that ensures our survivability. One of the reasons Cheyenne Mountain was considered appropriate to mothball was that the accuracy and yield of nuclear weapons was such that the facility would not survive a nuclear strike,” he said. “Now we have additional threats related to cyber-attacks and drone attacks. Drone warfare is not nuclear warfare, hopefully, so an underground mountain facility is survivable.” Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.