COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The commander of NORAD-USNORTHCOM says the Department of Defense will not close its command centers in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

Responding to a question from WND during an exercise simulating a terrorist attack, Gen. Gene Renuart answered without hesitation.

"No," he said. "There is no plan to close the command centers within Cheyenne Mountain."

"Cheyenne Mountain has been here for many years, built for a very specific purpose, a wonderfully hardened facility," Renuart added.

WND previously reported the development of command centers within the new headquarters building at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs has raised questions about the future of Cheyenne Mountain.

Since the height of the Cold War, many Americans have identified NORAD command facilities built deep within Cheyenne Mountain as the most secure military facilities in the U.S., designed with the intention to survive even a nuclear attack, then envisioned from the Soviet Union.

In June, WND published an exclusive two-part interview with Col. Tom Muir, U.S. Army deputy operations officer for command center operations for NORAD and USNORTHCOM, detailing the distinctions between the NORAD command facilities housed in Cheyenne Mountain and the new NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters facilities at Peterson Air Force Base.

Renuart explained to WND that even before USNORTHCOM was created, the mission of homeland defense was not focused on a single command but spread over services and other agencies.

"As NORTHCOM stood up after 9/11, in October 2002 we became a coherent Department of Defense force for homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities," he said. "Clearly, this mission requires a command-and-control capability that is agile and up-to-date, built to handle the current threats and potential contingencies that we see."

Renuart explained that the mission of NORAD is interdependent with homeland defense, "because once you've warned, for instance, of a missile or air threat to the United States, in other words, once you've identified a principal NORAD mission, then you have to be able to do something about it, which becomes the NORTHCOM mission."

"Cheyenne Mountain is going to remain our primary command center for missile warning," he said. "But missile defense actually resides with NORTHCOM, because we have the response."

The plan then, is to bring NORAD and USNORTHCOM together "so that there is a seamless transparency between the warning, the air intercept that we do in our NORAD hat, and the response, all the way through consequence management."

If the threat is able to conduct its operation, he said, then "we have to be able to deal with a national emergency and that, once again, becomes a USNORTHCOM mission."

"So, the size of that entity combining NORAD and USNORTHCOM into a joint command facility and the ability to integrate it all is larger than the capacity that we have within Cheyenne Mountain," he explained.

"It is partly a physical space constraint," Renuart added. "Then we have here multiple agencies being wired together here in a modern Internet, telecommunications infrastructure that possibly may be better able to do from this new facility at the NORAD-USNORTHCOM building at Peterson Air Force Base."

Will Cheyenne Mountain become obsolete in the future?

"No," Renuart answered. "Cheyenne Mountain has a very important role for us because it also gives us the ability to have a hardened, protected operations center for those key instances where we may need that."

Cheyenne, he elaborated, doesn't have the "same size and muscle that we will have in our combined center here at the NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters. But we are also integrating some of those most critical functions in the homeland defense world up into the mountain. If the threat requires a hardened facility, and we need to go to Cheyenne Mountain, we will do so."

WND asked Renuart to address the security of the NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters building at Peterson Air Force Base.

"First, we work very closely with Peterson Air Force Base to make sure the physical security of the base is robust," he replied.

"We are taking some additional action in addition to the design of our operations center," he continued. "We are taking some additional actions to physically improve security to the key infrastructure on the base. The base has built new single-point entry inspection sites. We are becoming more robust in security patrols."

He emphasized that officials have the ability to go to the mountain and continue operations quickly.

"Or, if a nation-state becomes a threat like we used to face, and we can't rule that out right now, but if a nation-state does that, we do have an ability to maintain continuity of operation in a very high threat environment by continuing to modernize the mountain," he said. "We will continue to use the mountain to train our command post teams. We can do that in a wonderful facility there."

The mountain infrastructure also will be used for training, he said, along with becoming a contingency location, if that is required.