/ world today news/ The American Northern Command is sending teams of its most important employees underground to wait for the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
About one million military personnel remain on the surface.
Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shanesy commanded the US Northern Command as well as the North American Aerospace Defense Command. – a joint US-Canadian operation that monitors the skies over North America for missile and air defense threats from every direction.
Earlier this week, General O’Shanesy told reporters via Facebook that some of his observation teams would move from their usual command centers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to designated, reinforced underground bunkers.
One of the facilities is the Cheyenne Mountain Bunker Complex, a system of tunnels buried under 610 meters of granite and sealed behind thick doors designed to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear blast.
“Our professionals from NORAD and NORTHCOM command, control and surveillance teams have left their homes, said goodbye to their families and are now isolated from everyone to ensure they can continue their surveillance every day to protect our homeland.” said the American general.
He also said that the military sent to the dungeons will share the bunker with other members of the armed forces.
However, General O’Shanesy said he was “not at liberty to discuss who is moving there at the moment”.
Another team has been sent to a yet-to-be-publicly identified location, the air chief added.
Facilities like Cheyenne Mountain are key to the US government’s plan to survive an apocalypse scenario.
In the event of an existential threat to the United States, such as a nuclear attack, the president and his representatives, as well as a select contingent of political, military, and civilian leaders, would be immediately evacuated to four secure facilities to govern the country from the safety of the ground.
These facilities are Cheyenne Mountain, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center below the White House, the Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Pennsylvania, and the Operations Center in Mount Weather, Pennsylvania.
While the coronavirus pandemic has not caused a mass withdrawal from Washington, it has forced US military leaders to take steps to ensure combat readiness.
After acknowledging that the U.S. military and its readiness will be affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday that the Pentagon will stop releasing accurate numbers of military personnel infected with Covid-19 to avoid exposing the weakness of America before her adversaries.
While some of General O’Shanesy’s forces head to a hilltop to wait out the end of the pandemic in hermetic isolation, millions of other soldiers on the surface will not enjoy the same luxury.
Army engineers have already been deployed to New York to scout locations for field hospitals, as the city accounts for more than a third of the state’s 112,000 cases.
As the crisis deepens, the US military appears to be taking an “all aboard” approach, both on and below the ground.
Although the U.S. military is barred from law enforcement on American soil, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday authorizing the recall of up to one million reservists and retired members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard.
Those reservists could be called up to help civilian authorities respond to the pandemic, as nearly 10,000 members of the U.S. National Guard are already doing.
On Wednesday, Secretary Mark Esper announced that a changed law would provide federal funding to states that agree to deploy more troops.
On top of that, two military medical ships have been dispatched to help treat patients in New York and Los Angeles.
Translation: SM
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