WASHINGTON-
The Defense Department can’t prove that moving key air and space surveillance missions out of Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain will save the $150 million officials have promised, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.
The report, released Monday, found it would cost at least $50 million to move critical missions from the Cold War-era war room to Peterson Air Force Base about 10 miles away.
The Defense Department also doesn’t yet know how risky the move will be, investigators found.
As a result, investigators say Congress should consider waiting to spend money on the move until the department finishes analyzing its costs and benefits.
“Neither DOD nor Congress has adequate information to assess the risks in relation to the costs of moving functions from Cheyenne Mountain,” the GAO wrote.
House Armed Services Committee members commissioned the study, asking the GAO to determine the cost, savings and risk of moving out of Cheyenne Mountain. The audit’s findings were first reported on last month by The Gazette of Colorado Springs, Colo.
The underground bunker outside Colorado Springs has served as the headquarters for the United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command since the early 1960s, when the U.S. and Canada decided they needed an operations center that could withstand an attack by a high-yield bomb.
Pentagon officials last July announced they no longer needed the bunker and planned to put Cheyenne Mountain on “warm standby.”
