NARRATOR: This is a
concertainer, a modern day military field fortification. It can be assembled on the
battlefield in several hours. The concertainer was
first used in the Gulf War as a British field
fortification. The densely-packed walls
are designed to withstand direct fire attack. The concertainer
represents the culmination of an art that has evolved
over thousands of years. It is the fortified castle
of the new Millennium. You often hear people talking
about impregnable fortresses. It's a myth. There is no such thing as
an impregnable fortress. Any fortification can be
taken if the attacker is willing to pay the cost. And that's a cost in
lives, a cost in equipment, and a cost in time. The whole object
of fortifications is to make that cost higher. NARRATOR: Fortifications are
ubiquitous throughout every society in recorded history. The earliest ones were very
simply designed hill forts. Prehistoric man would put a
crude fence of branches or bits of wood around his animals
to form a stockade. Usually, these forts would
be situated on a hill to make it more difficult for
an intruder to arrive unnoticed. But while the walls
were a deterrent, they were not strong
enough to hold off any determined attacker. Wooden stockades are
fairly fragile structures. You can knock them
down fairly easily. They rot. They catch fire. All sorts of bad things happen. So where it was
available, people worked in to start building
walls out of stone. NARRATOR: Throughout history,
many important events have taken place
around a fortress. The first evidence of a city
protected with stone walls was found in the Near East. The City of Jericho
controlled that area because of its
strategic location along the Jordan River. The original walls
of this desert oasis are believed to date
back to 8000 BC. The 3,000 inhabitants built
freestanding, large, stone walls that were 6 feet
thick and 23 feet high. There was a tower in one of
the walls and a stairway. The famed Bible story picks up
at the beginning of the year 1300 BC, when the Israelites
entered Palestine and sent Joshua to claim Jericho. For six days Joshua walked
around the perimeter of Jericho with trumpets blaring. And on the seventh day,
as the saying goes, the walls came tumbling down. The construction
of stone fortresses became more sophisticated
throughout the ancient world. And so did the methods
for breaching those walls. They had had battering rams. They had movable towers
that they could move up against the walls of the forts
to allow the attacker to get over the top of the walls. So again, we see this constant
struggle between the defender and the attacker. NARRATOR: The city
of Troy in Anatolia was a strategically located city
in the Near East that guarded the entrance to the Black Sea. The Greeks were unable
to penetrate the walls. So in 1184 BC, they
devised another method to conquer the fortress. The Greeks did not have very
sophisticated siege equipment. They just had standard
personal weapons. So all they could try and
do was climb over the walls. And that's a hard
thing to do against any well-built fortification
that has a good garrison. NARRATOR: According to the Greek
writer Homer and the "Iliad," the city of Troy had
steep, 20-foot high walls. It was believed
to be impregnable. But the Greek General
Ulysses hid his men in a huge wooden horse that was
offered to the city as a gift. The gift was accepted, and
the Greeks conquered Troy. As Ulysses proved no fortress
is absolutely impregnable, this was the cold reality that
faced Herod, the King of Judea, in 35 BC. Herod was aligned
with the Roman Empire. But he began to fear that
Cleopatra coveted Masada, the gateway to Egypt and Africa. The name Masada comes from the
Aramaic word [non-english],, which means fortress. So Herod reinforced Masada,
building a massive casemate wall. That's a wall that's
made out of two walls with a space in between. And the space in between
was about 8 feet wide. And there, there were rooms
and places for guards and guard towers. And there were towers
around the whole wall. And then he built two palaces. NARRATOR: Masada's
location, rising 1,300 feet above the Jordan River, made
it seemingly unapproachable. During Herod's residence, no
battles took place at Masada. But later, in the year 66 AD,
a small group of Jewish zealots claimed Masada as
their stronghold. It was the last bastion against
the Roman army, who came back to conquer it in the year 72. The Romans were determined
to unseat the zealots from their stronghold. After six months
of preparations, Flavius Silva led his men in
an attack against the fortress. And then he brought up what's
known as a siege machine, which is a iron-plated wooden
structure from within which archers could fire into
Masada, the walled fortress. And while that was going on, the
way that they cover themselves were with catapults. And hundreds of
grapefruit-sized stones were found on the top of Masada. NARRATOR: The Romans started
shooting flaming arrows, which ultimately set fire to the inner
wooden walls of the fortress. This spelt doom for the
967 zealots on Masada. [inaudible] brought
together the zealots and said, God has shown us that the tide
is fatally turned against us. But we're not going to
become slaves to the Romans. We got into this fight because
we serve no one but God. Therefore, we will
only allow our deaths to be by the hand of God. What he meant by this was that
they would commit suicide. NARRATOR: According to the
Jewish historian Josephus, the men killed the women
and children first, and then themselves. With the Israelites
completely in their control, the Romans continued to expand
and contain their empire through the use of precise,
strong fortification techniques and sophisticated siege methods. Their status as a
dominant world power would last for
several hundred years. In the year 120 AD,
the emperor Hadrian ordered the building of a
series of walls and forts to divide Roman Britain from the
unconquered Northern Territory. It was built as much to keep the
Britons in as to keep invaders out. Hadrian's Wall is a quite
sophisticated fortification. It's a stone wall. It's approximately 20 feet high. Runs the entire with the
Britain from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. There are, every mile,
things called mile castles, which were small posts
occupied by full time garrison. Between these were
lookout towers. And then, periodically,
spaced wider out were large fortified camps, all
permanent fortifications built the last. NARRATOR: But Hadrian's Wall
did not prove invincible in its day. It was besieged by attackers
outside of Roman control. And this, coupled with weakened
imperial authority in Rome, contributed to the end of
the Great Roman Empire. Well, like every
empire, every world power, they basically weakened over
time for a variety of reasons-- corruption in the government,
lack of energy, as it were, on the part of the population. NARRATOR: The fall of
Rome in 400 AD brought about the Dark Ages. And the art of fortification
all but disappeared. In 1066, William of Normandy
crossed the English Channel from France and quickly
overtook Britain's defenses. To secure his position, he began
building a chain of castles. These castles were populated by
individual lords and barons who ruled their immediate
surrounding territories. The number of Norman castles
grew into the hundreds. Over the next 200
years, a more stable, centralized society developed. And the techniques
of castle building and the purpose of the
castle matured as well. In the British
Isles, they became known as the bones of the
kingdom, the King's fortresses. During the Middle Ages,
the castle evolved as a-- the preeminent example of a
defensive structure that could be used as a pivot in warfare. NARRATOR: The castles were
constructed of quarried stone and bound with a mortar
made of sand and lime. Hundreds of craftsmen
worked on the structures. The elaborate designs included
an outer curtain wall, which was maculated,
or indented, with merlins through
which the defenders could fire their weapons and
then duck for cover. The castles were equipped
with protruding towers at the corners so that all
sides of the curtain wall could be covered. And at certain points along
the wall were [non-english],, or murder holes, through which
the defenders could drop lethal objects like boiling oil upon
the attackers if they succeeded in getting through the gate. In the 13th century, Edward
I built many castles in Wales to protect England's
interests there. And you particularly
began to see that in the 12th and
the 13th century, castles become much more
sophisticated, much more powerful. You also see towns
beginning develop. And towns become more important. And because it's still
not a very settled time, you needed fortifications
to protect those towns. NARRATOR: The world has
become a walled fortress. The Great Wall of China,
which was begun in 214 BC, covered 1,400 miles of
mountainous terrain. The wall was 40 feet high in
places and had 12-foot towers every 200 paces. Built to keep out
foreign invaders, it was finally
abandoned in 1368. In 324, Constantinople
became the new Rome, the seat of the Holy Roman Empire. This great walled city stood
as the center of Middle Eastern civilization for
more than 1,000 years until it was conquered
by the Turks in 1453. It was a new
technological advance that signaled the downfall
of the mighty fortress, the invention of gunpowder. Essentially, gunpowder
made the castle obsolete. It took a long time to
reduce a castle by siege. When gunpowder came along,
this was all changed. An adversary could
put in place a cannon and knock down a wall
in a matter of days rather than taking months. NARRATOR: Cannon fire
posed a major problem for castle defenses. The greater the
height of the walls, the better the target
for the attack. Fiery missiles would
crack the stone walls, weakening them to the point
where they would eventually fall. Privately-owned fortresses were
soon to be a thing of the past. And the design and
construction of fortifications became the sole domain
of military engineers. And the main thing-- the main
approach that was taken was to lower the walls, to sink
the walls into a ditch. By doing that, you put the outer
edge of the ditch between you and the artillery. You cannot be hit directly. So you're much safer
from gunpowder artillery. NARRATOR: In the 1600s,
Sebastian de Vauban was known as a master of
siegecraft in the French army. He perfected a method of
attack called sap and parallel. Attackers would dig
trenches in a zigzag method up to the walls
of a fortification to protect themselves and
enable their cannons to hit their targets from a
closer vantage point. The fortresses built from
scratch built in open terrain were basically star shaped. And they could have anywhere
from seven or eight bastions. And they were
built symmetrically because you wanted every
point of a fortification to be equally strong. NARRATOR: The Vaubanian
star-shaped fortress that had worked so
effectively in Europe migrated to North America with the
Spanish and French settlers. This elaborate design
was also used in 1755 in the construction of Fort
Ticonderoga in the state of New York on Lake Champlain. Built by the French, it played
a role in the French and Indian War. It was taken by Ethan
Allen and Benedict Arnold during the American Revolution. The Americans held the
Fort until July of 1777, when General Burgoyne and his
British redcoats took it back. With Ticonderoga defeated,
George Washington decided to fortify another
strategic location-- West Point. It was essential to get men
and material between the New England colonies and those
to the mid-Atlantic colonies in the South. Whatever industrial capacity
we had was in New England. The grain was in the West. It was essential that those
two segments of the population could be brought to bear
to defend the country. NARRATOR: West Point,
New York is made up of rocky promontories on
one side of the river, and Constitution
Island on the other. The river makes an S-shape
turn at this juncture. And that became another crucial
reason for fortifying the area. What this meant was that
any British ship coming North would have to slow
down considerably going through the S turn. And the river also was
narrow at this point, only 400 yards wide. That meant that the entire
river could be covered with fire at a point where the
British ships would be going the slowest. NARRATOR: The
Continental Congress voted to fortify these
highlands in 1775. The first man they chose
to design the structures was a Dutch botanist
named Bernard Romans. The selection of Bernard
Romans as the first engineer at West Point in some ways
highlights the absence of trained
professional officers. The Continental Congress
did not have anyone to turn to to entrust with
this very large project, and were forced to turn to,
basically, the first individual who said he could do it. NARRATOR: Romans'
plan for West Point became a costly and
ill-fated endeavor. And because he had
no military experience, he didn't understand
the difference between simple principles, such
as grazing fire and plunging fire, and emplaced his cannons
high up on the hill, where they would actually have a very hard
time aiming down and shooting at the British warships. NARRATOR: Romans' batteries
were abandoned in October 1777, but General Washington did
not give up on his plan to fortify West Point. In early 1778, Washington
brought Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish military
engineer, to West Point to begin a second phase
of fortifications. He looked at the
rocky lay of the land and came up with the idea of
building field fortifications in key locations and many
forts, called redoubts, along the river. This became Fortress West Point. A Fortress West Point consists
of several forts, a number of redoubts on both
sides of the river, and taking advantage of the
difference in elevations. Kosciuszko was a master in
utilizing the differences in terrain. NARRATOR: Washington
felt confident that the Fortress at West
Point would buy him time in the Hudson River area. But what he didn't count
on was that his commandant would try to betray him. Benedict Arnold was
becoming disillusioned with the revolution,
and saw no way to achieve absolute victory. At West Point he began making
plans to provide the British with military secrets. He passed the information
to John Andre, a British go-between. He began to let their Fort
and redoubts begin to decay, not keeping them up so it would
make it easier for the British to attack. And if he had been successful,
if the plans had gotten to the British,
there's no doubt, with a traitor in
command of West Point, the British could
have been successful. NARRATOR: But the British
never did get the plans. Major Andre was apprehended
before delivery. And Benedict Arnold
was accused of treason. West Point was never
attacked by the British due, in part, to the new
interdependent system of forts devised by Thaddeus Kosciuszko. This may have been simply
an ad hoc series of solutions to a series of problems
and not a grandiose scheme to actually come up with
a revolutionary new system of fortifications. This is reinforced
by the fact that, after the American
Revolution, you see a decline in the use of
a series of fortifications and the return to the idea of
one main fortification, which would lead to the
building of Fort McHenry. NARRATOR: Fort McHenry
was a coastal fort built to defend the city of Baltimore
against a British sea attack during the War of 1812. It was here that Francis Scott
Key wrote the "Star-spangled Banner." Like Fort McHenry, the
purpose of Fort Pulaski was to defend the
port of Savannah against foreign invaders. It was in this
environment because of its strategic location in
the middle of the Savannah River that Lee and the administration
of President Madison decided that they should build a
fort here that can best protect the port city of Savannah,
protecting not only the city, but of course all the commerce-- the rice that was cultivated
along the coastal areas, the cotton, the pitch,
the tar, the pine. All these things were very
important commodities. NARRATOR: Because of Cockspur
Island's marshy grasslands, Fort Pulaski had to have
a special foundation to support its enormous weight. It sits on pilings that
go 81 feet into the ground. And on top of the pilings
are what's called grillage. Grillage is nothing more
than a fancy word for-- for a large platform. And on that platform, on
those pilings, sit this fort. NARRATOR: Fort Pulaski
is pentagonal shaped. Its walls are 7
and 1/2 feet thick, constructed out of 25
million bricks that were made by local slaves. The fort took 18 years to build. In December of 1860, federal
troops took over Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. And the war between
the states began. In January of 1861, the
Confederate States of America seized Fort Pulaski and
began arming it for battle. In the meantime, the Union Army,
led by engineer captain Quincy A. Gilmore, was building a
series of field fortifications and artillery batteries
on Tybee Island, a mile away across
the Savannah River. By April of 1862, they had
painstakingly constructed 11 artillery batteries
containing 36 cannons and mortars, all aimed
directly at Fort Pulaski. Gilmore decided to
try out a new type of unproven rifled
artillery for the assault. And that proved to be the
death knell for Fort Pulaski. Well, the point in
history, or the technology, is a new type of cannon
that would make this Fort, and all others all over
the world, obsolete. NARRATOR: On April 10 1862,
Gilmore launched his assault. Soldiers on both sides were
surprised by the performance of this new rifled cannonball. It could hit targets
precisely over a mile away. Ribs in the projectile
allowed the blast to propel it on a faster,
longer, and more direct trajectory. The Union fired over 5,000
shots in about 30 hours before Colonel Charles
Olmstead surrendered. The precision of the cannon
fire had succeeded in breaching two walls of Fort Pulaski. After the battle is
over, only 14 people were injured in the Fort. One would die at the time
and one apparently later on. Over on Tybee, there was not
one single person wounded, and only one man killed. So for a Civil War battle,
it was relatively bloodless. NARRATOR: Hidden among the
groves and hillsides of Eastern France lies what remains of
the greatest defensive barrier constructed since the
Great Wall of China. Built by the French between the
First and Second World Wars, The Maginot Line fulfilled
the goals of its creators. And yet, the French
suffered a crushing defeat within weeks of open
conflict with their enemies, the Germans. The line survives
largely in ruins. And yet, it barely saw any
direct assault on its defenses. For over half a century,
historians have debated. Was the Maginot Line
a horrendous failure or a thorough success? Conceived as a direct
response to the devastation wreaked upon France at the
close of the First World War, it became equal parts
technology, desperation, and myth. But it began as a limited series
of defensive fortifications in Alsace-Lorraine
near the German border. Built to forestall
a German invasion, it soon grew, at least
in the minds of some, into an impregnable barrier
over 500 miles long, extending from one end
of France to the other. The Maginot Line consisted
of reinforced, subterranean concrete fortifications,
linked by firepower with large
underground galleries, some containing railroads that
carried ammunition and troops, plus sophisticated, powerful
weapons and communication centers, all designed to
conserve manpower and keep Germany out of France. Throughout the countryside,
medieval towns and villages are surrounded by walls
designed to keep attackers out and villagers safely in. But fortifications have
their drawbacks too. One of the problems with
any sort of extensive system of fortifications is you
have to defend them all, and you have to defend
them all equally. Otherwise, your
attacker is going to go through your weak spot. So this means you have to
spread out your defenders. And this gives somewhat of
an advantage to the attacker because it allows the
attacker to attack you-- concentrate his strength while
you have your strength spread out. NARRATOR: Trench warfare became
a cornerstone in French plans for their future defense. The logic being
that the trenches had held, which, in actual fact,
they didn't, as we all know. But the French like to believe
that flimsy trenches, which were cheap, and bits of barbed
wire and lots of machine guns, you know, could keep
the country safe. Whereas, others proposed
a limited number of fortifications. Of course they were busily
ignoring advances in aviation and artillery. But then it's a well-known
saying that generals always fight the last war. NARRATOR: The French knew that,
ultimately, the Rhineland would be reoccupied by Germany if
the Allies remove themselves from this buffer zone. If the Germans
reoccupied the Rhineland, France would be vulnerable. At least along its borders
with Switzerland and Italy, the Alps were a
formidable barrier . In the North,
Belgium was an ally. And in the East, the Rhine
River and Vosges Mountains provided some protection. But the Rhineland was
perceived as an open door. And the French
endeavored to close it by undertaking a massive program
of fortification construction along the Franco-German border. In the 1920s when they went--
made the decision to go ahead and build a system
of fortifications, the war minister set
up several commissions. And about 1927, they set up
something known as the CORF, which, in English, refers to a
commission for the organization of fortified front. And what the CORF did was
prepare the designs that were going to be used on
all the fortifications. NARRATOR: CORF drew up the
plans in the late 1920s. But the push to fund the
construction of the defenses began with Paul Painlevé,
who was then minister of war. Painlevé was succeeded by a
former war hero named André Maginot, but Maginot had
nothing to do with the design of the barrier. Shortly after having initially
secured nearly three million francs for the defenses, tall,
solitary André Maginot died. Three years later, a newspaper
referred to the Eastern defenses as the Maginot
Line, and the name stuck. The whole objective
of the Maginot Line was to delay a German
attack into France. Not to stop the
Germans were attacking, but to make it very
difficult for the Germans to attack, and to be able to
use this defensive position as something behind which they
could mobilize a field army and defend themselves and be
prepared to launch counter-- counterattacks. It basically was intended
to offset the population difference between
France and Germany. NARRATOR: But the purpose of
the line would slowly shift. As the decade moved
on and as the pressure for reducing military
service increased and when it became clear that
one, the Rhineland was going to be evacuated and probably
ahead of schedule, two, the army was going
to be reduced-- the length of
military service would be reduced to one year, the
function of the fortifications shifted to being an effective
substitute for a reduced army. And that's really
the crucial question of how to think about
the fortifications, how to fit them into
larger military plan. NARRATOR: With this in
mind, the French military drew up plans for the Line. And construction
officially began in 1929. The Maginot Line would consist
of a series of large and small defensive positions, linked
together and specifically designed to make use of
the natural landscape. Built by local
contractors, construction was coordinated by CORF
through the war ministry, and continued throughout
the early 1930s. Ultimately, the Maginot Line
contained about 1 and 1/2 million cubic
meters of concrete-- nearly enough to fill
California's Rose Bowl twice-- 150,000 tons of steel,
and 450 kilometers of roads and railways. It's made up of a series of
defensive positions connected together by anti-tank
obstacles and by barbed wire. And there are
defensive positions that fire along these lines
so that if any attacker tries to come through them, they're
going to be taken in the flank and be under fire continuously
from wherever they go. Periodically, this Line is
strengthened by stronger works called ouvrages which is
literally "work" in French. NARRATOR: The basic
components of the ouvrages were massive concrete combat
blocks sunk low into the ground so that they were concealed
from view as much as possible. The roofs of these were,
in some cases, up to 10 and 12 feet thick of
reinforced concrete. Each one had its own type
of armament, normally. That might be a 75
millimeter gun turret. It might be a 135
millimeter Howitzer turret. It might be an 81
millimeter mortar turret. Or it might be what was
called the casemate block. And these were, instead of
guns being in turrets, were guns mounted firing
through embrasures in the wall of the block. NARRATOR: Ouvrages
came in two sizes-- petite and gross. Gross, or large, ouvrages
had combat blocks that were armed
with both infantry weapons, such as machine
guns and anti-tank guns, and with artillery pieces. The combat blocks of
petite, or small ouvrages, were armed only with
infantry weapons. There were ultimately about
two dozen gross ouvrages and three dozen petite
ouvrages in the Line. Deep beneath each
ouvrages, deep enough to resist enemy
bombs and bombardment was a network of
tunnels and galleries that connected the blocks
together and contained the ouvrages'
support facilities. These facilities were
decentralized to prevent catastrophic damage from
a single direct hit. The layout of the galleries
in the gross ouvrages was basically treelike, in that
you've got a root system, which is near the entrance block,
anywhere from up to a half mile to the rear of the main work. NARRATOR: Underground
galleries containing barracks accommodations, a power
plant capable of sustaining the ouvrage, and the
main ammunition supply were located near these blocks. And then running
from the roots to the crown of the tree
where the combat blocks were was one long gallery. And through this gallery there
was a train called the metro, after the Paris
underground system. And this is what a lot of
people have heard about. There really was a train. It was electric powered. And it was used primarily
to haul ammunition. The troops mostly had to walk. NARRATOR: The combat
blocks each had smaller underground galleries
connected to the main gallery. These galleries included
secondary magazines, small rest areas for troops, elevator
shafts that lifted ammunition and supplies to
the combat blocks. Combat blocks were usually
two-story structures, with weapons mounted on the
upper level and ammunition and air filtration equipment
on the lower level. Air inside the works was kept
at a higher pressure than air outside so that gas could
not come in through openings. Large filtration
systems were designed to filter out any poison gas. Ammunition, equipment,
and supplies were brought to the line by
trucks or special 24-inch gauge military railroads, the same
gauge as that used by trains inside the gross ouvrages. Diesel engines pulled small
cars carrying ammunition and supplies into the munitions
entrance blocks, where they were switched over and hauled
by electric locomotives in the galleries. The fort contained large
amounts of ammunition. And provisions were
made for supplying that rapidly to the combat blocks
because combat blocks-- although they were
small in number and didn't have many guns, they
had very rapid firing guns. And they could burn a lot
of ammunition in a hurry. NARRATOR: The Line kept a low
profile along the surface. The exception was the fixed,
unretractable steel dome called a cloche, which
means "bell" in French. Over 1,500 were built,
each large enough to hold one or two men. The cloches served
many purposes, including observation
and close in defense. Sitting on the surface
like giant steel mushrooms, cloches were made
of very thick metal. They were very strong,
armor up to 10 inches thick. But it turned out that that
wasn't really quite thick enough because the Germans
came up with the 88 millimeter anti-aircraft gun, which,
although it couldn't penetrate in most cases, could
certainly do enough damage to give the people
inside a real headache. NARRATOR: As
construction continued, the scope of the Line was
extended South along the Rhine River and West toward
the English Channel. But the funding for the
extensions was not on the scale that André Maginot had secured
for the original Maginot Line before his death, and was
inadequate for the expanded system. Ironically, as the Germans began
to learn more about the Maginot Line, the French seemed
to understand it less. In 1936, as the initial
construction effort on the Maginot Line
was nearing completion, Hitler gave France a
dress rehearsal for war. Other events were taking place
in the world of politics that would have an impact on the
construction and usefulness of the Maginot Line. France had always assumed
Belgium would be its ally to the North, and thus
hadn't extended the Line to the English Channel. In fact, construction
of the Line had implicitly anticipated
this partnership, allowing the French to
concentrate their forces away from the Maginot Line, and
towards wherever an attack was most likely. Now, where did they
want to concentrate them? They wanted to concentrate
them on the northern frontier. And for a good long while, what
they really would have liked is to concentrate them and to
cooperate with the Belgians so if there was a next war, it
wouldn't be fought in France. It would be fought in Belgium. And after the Germans
remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, the
Belgians backed out. Why should they
cooperate with the French in using their territory as
the main theater of operations? They were in a very,
very difficult position. NARRATOR: In 1936,
Belgium declared its permanent neutrality. And suddenly, France
had a huge exposed flank all along its
border with Belgium. Beyond the dense Ardennes
Forest toward Dunkirk, the landscape posed
insurmountable problems. The region is heavily
industrialized along the border with Belgium. In addition, the land
close to the coast has a high water table,
making underground galleries infeasible. Finally, no natural barriers
exist along this flat plain. France decided it
would deploy soldiers along that border as a defense. At the same time that
France began construction of the Maginot Line, it
began an extensive program of fortification
construction in the Alps along the border with Italy. The difficult landscape provided
better defensive positions. Although these fortifications
were not necessarily as dense as those in the
Maginot Line proper, they were similarly built. And
their location often gave them a considerable advantage
over an invading enemy. In 1939, the border
between France and Germany was a taut line
stretched across Europe. As the decade drew to a close,
so did any chance for peace. MAN ON RADIO: Britain went to
war against Germany today, 25 years and 30 days from the time
she entered the War of 1914 against the same enemy. France is expected to follow
suit within the next few hours. NARRATOR: The Maginot Line
was put on full alert, and troops were deployed
along its entire length. In fact, France
invaded Germany first. Although it made
limited excursions just over the German border, no
serious offensive effort was ever considered. The French anticipated deploying
the bulk of their troops along the border between
Belgium and France. The only gap in the defenses
was in the heavily wooded area known as the Ardennes Forest. The French believe that no
modern army could invade through the Ardennes, so
they didn't worry very much about defending it. The Maginot Line
forced the enemy to attack France's
weakest point. And this proved
fatal for France, as the Germans pushed through,
using tanks and airplanes in ways the French
hadn't anticipated. They went through
that area and wrapped up the French and British
armies and the Belgian armies and the Dutch armies. And then they prepared to
swing down into France. And what they did was a
great turning movement starting along the coast and
swinging around and then coming around in to attack the
Maginot Line from the rear. NARRATOR: For the most part,
when the Germans did attack the Maginot Line, they were
unsuccessful, with the combat blocks standing up
well to bombardment by the heaviest artillery the
Germans could bring into play. The Germans marched into
Paris on June 14, 1940, and seized the heart of
France without ever breaking through the Maginot Line. Within weeks of the German
invasion, France was defeated. Hitler was in Paris. The bulk of the troops along
much of the Maginot Line hardly heard a gun fire. Word came down that
France had capitulated. Undefeated, the troops
surrendered the Maginot Line only to become prisoners of war. Soon, the Maginot Line
became a storage depot for German military equipment. The world was stunned at
how quickly France collapsed under the German juggernaut. In the long run, that may
be one of the biggest failures in the Maginot Line. It may have engendered this
false sense of security on the part of the French that,
perhaps, they would have been better off to take the money
they had spent on the Maginot Line and to spend that money
on improving their army, improving their training. NARRATOR: By the
close of World War II, the age of the fortified
defensive barrier had ended. In the nuclear age,
no serious attempt has been made to build a
fortress around a country. And so the Maginot Line
still wanders helter skelter through the Eastern
fields of France, invaded only by tourists. Technological high point
and low point, all at once. The young man that
landed at Normandy are old now, those
that survived. Other men of D-day
have never left. They keep a silent
vigil above the beach, defending against generations
that may forget the price they paid and the promise they kept. They sacrificed their
lives upon a wall that made an entire continent a
fortress, Hitler's Atlantikwall a fortification
of such magnitude that only the most ambitious and
audacious attack in the history of warfare could
possibly defeat it. And it did. In 1941, German defeat
was almost unimaginable. Adolf Hitler's German war
machine appeared unstoppable. The fuhrer seemed an answered
prayer to a defeated Germany. Hitler promised a way out
of despair through invasion. Germany would succeed if only it
could do away with its enemies. Invasions began in 1939. The world watched passively
as Germany attacked. Czechoslovakia fell in March,
then Poland, Norway, Denmark. Belgium toppled in three
weeks, Holland in four days. Battle-weary France
collapsed in seven weeks. By June the Germans
were in Paris. The Nazi blitzkrieg had taken a
stunned continent by surprise. By the end of the year,
all that separated Britain from Nazi domination were
the icy waters of the English Channel, a scant 20 miles. The German army had
witnessed phenomenal success. Now, it had to hold
on to those gains while defeating its
remaining enemies-- England across the channel,
Russia in the East. But Germany had neither the
manpower nor the materials to engage both countries in a
simultaneous assault. Hitler had to choose which
enemy to defeat first-- England or Russia. The Battle of Britain began,
as Germany attempted to bomb England into submission. Unable to gain air
superiority over England, Hitler chose to attack Russia. German forces were sent
to the Eastern Front to begin the assault
in June of 1941. But Hitler now had
nearly 3,000 miles of Western European
coastline to protect. How does an army defend so much
territory with so few troops? At first, with expectations
of a quick Russian defeat, Hitler planned to defend
Europe with weaponry, big guns around the major ports in
Belgium, Holland, and France. But the Russians did
not collapse as quickly as Hitler had hoped. The German army was
stuck in Russia, unprepared for the
approaching Russian winter. When the Germans noticed
that Russia was not so conquerable
within half a year and that there would
be a front for some-- some years more, the threat
of England and America became greater. And that's why the Atlantic
wall was constructed. NARRATOR: A new plan was needed
to protect the Western Front, as more troops were
sent to subdue Russia. Hitler's solution
was a wall that would defend every
mile of coastline from Denmark to Spain. At first a modest defense,
Hitler's vision of the wall would grow as the
war progressed. Hitler envisioned a fortress
that would consist of troops coordinated among
the German military to repel an enemy invasion. Troops would be
supplemented by fortresses at key, strategic locations. What could the Germans
do more than defend it with blockhouses,
batteries, everything? There were no troops enough. There were no armored
divisions enough. They could make
concrete shelters. They had laborers. They had materials to
construct those things. The Germans had no other
choice than defend Europe with an Atlantic wall. NARRATOR: Hitler gave the order. The challenge was
how to execute it with limited resources
in occupied territory in the middle of a war. The Germans had
been in World War I. And they knew how
to dig ditches. And they knew how to
put trenches in place. And they knew the kind of fire
they needed to hold a position. And they put all of that to use. The basic strategy was
laid out within a month or so after Pearl Harbor. And that was Europe
first, cross the channel, go to the heart of Germany. That was our basic strategy
from the very beginning. Everything was hinged on that. I don't know what would have
happened if it had not worked. NARRATOR: The execution
of such a plan would take years to prepare. Plenty of time,
Germany believed, to build an unbreachable
Atlantic wall. The Germans could be sure
of two things in 1942: first, that the Allies would
launch an attack from England, and second, that the Allies were
unprepared to attack anytime soon. But Hitler's attention
was drawn to the stalemate his troops faced within Russia. His army had been stopped, and
reinforcements were needed. Nevertheless, work began
on the Atlantic wall. Defenses extended from the
Arctic Circle to the Pyrenees. Natural obstacles such as
fjords and mountain ranges were incorporated into the wall. In fact, hundreds of
miles of Atlantic wall would consist of nothing
more than rugged terrain. The greatest natural obstacle
of all was the English Channel. Notoriously unpredictable,
the roiling waters had swallowed entire armadas. The Germans made use of
French coastal defenses already in place at
key strategic ports as early as 1941,
which they supplemented with their own large coastal
artillery battalions. Materials and labor-- often
forced labor-- were taken from local communities. An awful lot of
the Atlantic wall, incidentally, was
made by Frenchman who were under the point of
a gun working for the Germans helping to build this
wall, to pour the cement, to put in the steel
reinforcing rods. NARRATOR: The Germans
concentrated their construction efforts in the Pas
de Calais area. They recognized Calais as
the best site for an attack against the continent. The successful invasion
force at Calais could march straight to Germany
a few hundred miles away. Less important or
breachable coastline was fortified by strongpoint
groups, defense structures that were smaller than the
artillery batteries guarding the major ports. Even smaller individual
strong points with less powerful weaponry
were built in more remote areas. Concrete dome bunkers,
or pillboxes, soon went up in France, Norway,
and the Netherlands. They contained gun batteries
ranging from 150 millimeters to 406 millimeters. By the fall of 1941, over 1,000
artillery guns lined the coast. By June of 1942,
construction crews poured over 200,000 cubic
meters of concrete every month. Ultimately, over 17,300,000
cubic yards of concrete, reinforced with millions
of tons of steel, would be utilized
during construction. Further, the coastline
was divided into sectors to be guarded by troops. The 15th Army was
responsible for the coast from the Netherlands to
Normandy, including the key Pas de Calais region. The Seventh Army along
the coast from Cannes to the mouth of the Loire, and
the First Army from the Loire to the Pyrenees. Eventually, the 19th Army
would watch the Riviera coast, in the event of an invasion
from allied troops in Africa. Instead of military training,
many of the German troops along the Atlantic
wall spent their time in construction projects. Reinforced concrete
bunkers were built with walls 3 and 1/2 meters
thick, so thick they could withstand direct hits by Allied
bombing raids with virtually no damage. Elaborate and impregnable
battery positions were constructed. Railways delivered ammunition. Camouflage was used
to hide locations. In less than four
years, the Germans had poured enough concrete to
build 5 and 1/2 Hoover dams. The Atlantic wall was the
largest construction project of the entire war. It's very, very remarkable
that, in a short time, the Germans built a lot of
constructions, little bunkers, but also very big bunkers. It's remarkable. NARRATOR: But was it enough? The Allies had already begun
an air campaign against Germany that forced workers
along the Atlantic wall back to Germany, where they went
to work rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure. The Allies were also
in Africa by 1942. The Germans were forced
to retreat into Italy. With Allied troops in Africa,
the Mediterranean coast of France also became
vulnerable to attack. Thin German resources were
stretched even further, as roughly 400 miles of
Mediterranean coastline were added to the Atlantic wall. In late 1943, with the
possibility of invasion growing with each
passing day, Hitler asked Rommel to evaluate
the coastal defenses. Rommel toured the wall from
Norway to the Pyrenees. He examined bunkers, gun
emplacements, fortifications, miles of defenses, tons
of concrete and steel, years of work. And he found them
woefully inadequate. How do you defend the whole
Bay of Biscay and the whole parts of Europe that had come
on to the English Channel and then-- and then Europe
up in the North Sea? You can't. It was just too long. There wasn't that much
concrete in Germany. There weren't that many men. NARRATOR: Just as Erwin Rommel
began strengthening Hitler's Atlantic wall, the
Allies across the channel were planning their attack. Of primary importance
to the Allies was choosing the invasion site. Calais was the
obvious first choice, but the Germans had so heavily
defended the Atlantic wall here that the Allies were not
sure they could take it. They had tried to go in at
Pas de Calais near Dieppe. They'd have been
slaughtered because that's where the Germans had built
the defenses most effectively. But when you started to
get away from those parts to the South and West-- a-ha. Then they weren't as effective. NARRATOR: A better
choice was Normandy, with its sandy beaches between
Saint-Martin-de-Varreville and Osterham. True, there were disadvantages. There were no harbor
ports except for Cherbourg to the West and Le
Havre to the East. The channel was 120 miles
wide between Portsmouth and Normandy. And Germany is further away
from Normandy than Calais. But the advantages
were significant. The Germans had not
fortified Normandy as heavily as they had fortified
other parts of the wall. And since the Germans did not
expect an invasion in Normandy, the Allies might catch
the Germans by surprise. Rommel set about making
sure the Atlantic wall would be strong enough to stop
the Allies on the beach. This meant infantry obstacles. Rommel asparagus,
wooden poles designed to snap the wings of
invading glider planes, grew in the farmlands
of Normandy. Miles and miles of barbed
wire covered the coast. Tetrahedrons made of scrap metal
were planted along the shore, where they would be just
under water at high tide. Teller mines placed on top of
these tetrahedron guaranteed that if any boat
touched or brushed them, the mines would explode. Belgian gates, which
were first used to defend the Belgian coast,
were steel barriers designed to prevent supply and troop
ships from easy access to the shore. Hedgehogs made from
welded railroad ties and designed to puncture
holes in landing craft were laid all over the beach. Large wooden spikes
aimed toward the sea would puncture the
halls of landing craft. Machine gun nests,
strategically placed, could lay flat
across open beaches. Lowlands behind the
beaches were flooded. You can see the defense
is a garden of dead because of our very much booby
traps, obstacles. NARRATOR: The Allies were making
final preparations for D-day. They set the invasion date. Allied troops would
land at Normandy on the morning of June 5, 1944. The British would land at
Sword and Gold, the Canadians at Juno, and the Americans
at Omaha and Utah. They worked out the logistics. They supplied the ships. They foresaw every contingency. Cooperation was high,
except for the weather. Storms were brewing in
the English Channel. Seas were so high
that Eisenhower feared the armada would
be destroyed before it got to France. On the morning of June 5,
Eisenhower's staff weatherman promised the weather
would improve. But gray clouds scattered
across the skies. I was driving up
in a driving rain. He said, [inaudible],, I don't
know how the hell in the world am I ever going to
order an invasion under these conditions. So he polled. Once again, [inaudible]
always said go. The Navy said OK. And the Air force said, maybe. So he said, we go. NARRATOR: Eisenhower
ordered the invasion on. There would be no
turning back now. Over 150,000 men
were headed to France to attack the Atlantic wall
and push the Germans back to Berlin. After years of
planning, it was now up to the men who would
fight the Battle of Normandy. The Germans stationed
along the Atlantic wall woke up to see the greatest
armada ever assembled, ready to land troops,
equipment, and weapons. The Allied soldiers had been
told there would be no Atlantic wall by the time they landed. We got cruisers,
and we got destroyers. And they're going to
pound the holy hell out of those big defenses
that are on the bluffs. And you're going to have tanks
coming in right beside you. Now, when you get to that beach,
you get behind those tanks. And you follow them up
to the top of the bluff. And that's when your
war is going to start. You're going to be
through the Atlantic wall. NARRATOR: But it didn't
go according to plan. On some beaches, Allied
bombing from the armada completely missed the
German fortifications. Not every beach posed
the same defenses. At Utah, the Atlantic wall
hardly stopped the Americans at all. At Sword, heavy bombardment
had, in fact, been successful for the British. But Omaha Beach was
a shooting gallery. They got just clobbered, just
clobbered by German machine guns, by German mortars,
by German 88s that were flying across the beach. And they just took
horrendous casualties. NARRATOR: Still,
the Atlantic wall was simply not strong
enough to stop the Allies. The wall had been a
success in some ways. It had delayed an Allied
invasion, buying Hitler time. It prolonged the war and raised
the associated costs of war, not just in tanks
and guns and planes, not just in the cities
that were destroyed, but in civilians,
soldiers, and prisoners. The Atlantic wall deflected
the invasion to Normandy, forcing the Allies further from
their ultimate goal of Germany. And on the beaches of
Normandy on June 6, 1944, it cost men their lives. Approximately 4,900 Allied
casualties that first day, many from Omaha Beach. Nobody knows the number
of German casualties. But ultimately, the
wall had been a failure. The Allies had breached
the impenetrable barrier in 14 hours. By August they were in Paris. By spring of '45, they'd
cross the Rhine in Germany. No wall could defend the
Nazis along the entire coast of Europe, could resist
the force of cooperation among the Allied armed forces,
could withstand the juggernaut of American industry, could
survive the good fight. You want to know why
the Atlantic wall failed? Because of the people
who went against it. That's why it failed. NARRATOR: After World
War II, the threat of nuclear annihilation haunted
the minds of military engineers and defense strategists
around the world. Permanent fortifications
were no longer viable considering the power
of a detonated missile. In August of 1949, an event
took place in the Soviet Union that threatened the very
existence of North America. The Russians had the bomb. Eventually, the growing
Soviet military threat brought the US and
Canada together in a defensive partnership. In time, they would
undertake what many believe is the greatest underground
building project ever attempted. On June 1, 1950, the first
US-Canada Emergency Air Defense Plan was approved
by both nations. As a first step, Canada would
make its northernmost territory available for a radar
system that would have been cost prohibitive for them to
build and staff on their own. This system would be nicknamed
the DEW Line, for Distant Early Warning Line. The location of the line would
be between the Arctic Circle and latitude 70 degrees North. This would provide
the US and Canada with the earliest possible
warning of a Soviet attack. The stations were numerous. The cost was very, very high. And of course, the conditions
under which these stations had to be placed were
severe in the extreme. Canada, especially up North, can
be inhospitable in the winter. And we're talking about
temperatures that certainly would freeze exposed human
skin and test the vacuum tube technology of the
1950s to the limit. NARRATOR: In 1957, members of
the US Continental Air Defense Command and the Royal
Canadian Air Force jointly recommended that the US
and Canada could best counter the growing Soviet military
threat to North America by forming an integrated
defensive system with a combined staff
from both nations. The new organization would be
called the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD. On September 12, 1957, military
leaders from both the US and Canada celebrated the
establishment of NORAD at Ent Air force Base
in Colorado Springs. However, their exultation
was short lived. Less than three weeks
later on October 4, 1957, the Soviets stunned the world by
launching Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite,
into Earth orbit. In many places the Soviets
great scientific achievement sparked talk of spaceships
and moon travel. But to NORAD, it meant that it
would just be a matter of time before the Soviet Union had
the capability of lobbing nuclear weapons atop
intercontinental missiles into a defenseless
North America. The missile age required a
whole new defensive strategy. President Eisenhower
had made it clear that our national defense
policy would rest on a new-- new doctrine, sometimes called
the New Look, which basically emphasized the
role of air forces and aerospace defense and
a long-range strategic bombardment to deter the
Russians from attack. NARRATOR: Eisenhower strategists
came to the conclusion that despite the expenditure
of billions of dollars, at a certain point, the sheer
number of nuclear weapons would overwhelm any sort
of defensive system, including an
anti-ballistic system. Therefore, they reasoned
the best defense was a powerful offense. For the New Look
strategy to work, it was essential that the
President, the prime minister of Canada, and military
command authorities be given the earliest possible
warning that North America was under attack. If not, America's
offensive strike force could be wiped out in a
pre-emptive nuclear first strike. The idea was to deter a Soviet
attack by preserving the US capability for
massive retaliation. It was around this time that
NORAD's fundamental mission began to change from air defense
to detection, assessment, and warning. Now, NORAD needed a radar system
that could detect and track ballistic missiles
to their targets. In early 1958,
NORAD headquarters were located in a residential
neighborhood in Colorado Springs in an old, brick
building on the grounds of Ent Air force Base. In addition to being much too
small to manage the growing air defense system, the
building was highly vulnerable to conventional
attack or even sabotage, let alone a nuclear strike. NORAD's underground
combat operations center was a result of a number of
factors, not the least of which was the perceived threat. When the Soviets exploded
their hydrogen bomb and demonstrated a capability
to marry that to long range ballistic missiles, the secure
command and control facility seemed essential. NARRATOR: The Air force was
given the somewhat incredible task of creating
a hardened site, or an underground base
from which the NORAD combat operation center could
survive and operate in after a nuclear attack. After a thorough study
of potential sites, the Army Corps of Engineers
recommended Cheyenne Mountain in the front range of
the Rocky Mountains. Just four miles Southwest
of Colorado Springs, Cheyenne Mountain was near
existing communication lines and supporting
military installations. Most importantly, a
geological examination indicated that the mountain's
granite rock would offer the greatest degree
of protection against a thermonuclear blast
in the shortest possible construction time and
at the lowest cost. The excavation and creation of
the Cheyenne Mountain complex would arguably be the greatest
underground building project ever attempted. The Air Force design required
a 253,000 square foot facility of freestanding buildings
beneath 2,000 feet of solid granite. After an access road was built,
the first phase of excavation began on June 20,
1961, initiated by a ceremonial first blast. To give some idea of how
desperate NORAD was to complete the new hardened
center, they insisted that work be done in three
shifts, 24 hours a day, six days a week until the
excavation was completed. Over 1,800,000 800,000
pounds of high explosives were used to blast
the rock away. More than 693,000 tons of
granite were excavated. It took only 367
days to do the job. The excavation itself,
the building of the tunnels within the mountain, was
an extremely large project. It was run by the Army
Corps of Engineers. And they did an
exceptionally magnificent job in accomplishing that. NARRATOR: Great care
was taken in order not to blast away more rock than
the excavation design called for. An innovative blasting technique
called smooth wall blasting was used during excavation to
prevent excessive fracturing or weakening of the granite. To ensure that rock
throughout the excavation would remain structurally
sound, the walls of every cavern were reinforced with a
system of rock bolts. Placed in a 4-foot
pattern, these 6 foot to 32-foot long steel bolts hold
the rock together and provide the tension to withstand
the shock effects of a nuclear detonation. Chainlink mesh was then
fastened to these rock bolts. The wire mesh
prevents sprawling, or the natural loosening
of small rock fragments. More importantly, it would
catch any rock shaken loose by a nuclear blast. There are two entrances
into the mountain. The North portal leads to
a 1,500-foot long tunnel. And the South portal
runs for 2,500 feet. Both tunnels open into the
central access tunnel, which is 1,000 feet long, 25 feet
high, and 40 feet wide. The North and South tunnel
entrances serve as air intakes. But more significantly,
they were designed to allow a nuclear
blast a way to pass through one end of the
tunnel and out the other. The main complex is composed of
seven major chambers in a grid pattern. These chambers are 60 and 1/2
feet high and 56 feet wide. Phase two, or the build back
phase, of the project began in early 1964. 11 buildings were constructed
of continuously-rolled 3/8-inch steel. Most of the buildings
were three stories high. Each one was welded into
a self-contained box to protect sensitive electronic
equipment from the effects of an EMP, or Electromagnetic
Pulse, that is generated during a nuclear blast. An air lock system
was put in place to filter out the effects
of nuclear, biological, or chemical contamination. Blast valves and doors were
designed to prevent the effects of blast pressure and were
designed to close automatically by sensing changes in
the outside air pressure. All utility conduits were
joined at key junctions in the flexible type of
configuration which allows pipes and lines to easily sway
without breaking in the event of a seismic shockwave. Every system in the
mountain was also constructed with a triple
redundancy, including power. With construction
completed in early 1965, NORAD began the process of
installing their computers, displays, and
communications equipment into the new subterranean
combat control center. Linking everything
together and making it all work was not
going to be easy, but military planners believed
that our lives depended on it. The Soviet Union had already
initiated the largest nuclear weapons
buildup in history. In January of 1966, the new
NORAD combat operations center achieved its initial
operating capability. Cheyenne Mountain had now become
the all-knowing, all-seeing sentinel for North America. Sir, we have an unknown. Quick alert. Quick alert. Quick alert. Prepare to initiate. [inaudible] [inaudible] warning
[inaudible] quick alert. The site appears to be-- [inaudible] Roger. Sir, [inaudible] NORAD
assessment is required. Need a system report. System report's valid. Missile warning
recommends no assessment. This is a routine launch. NARRATOR: Over 30 years later,
the new NORAD command center continues to evaluate quick
alerts every time a missile is launched somewhere in the world. The command center
is fed information from six other centers in
and around Cheyenne Mountain. The system center confirms that
all communications and computer systems are operating
correctly so that what the people in the command
center and other centers are seeing on their
screens is accurate. NORAD's computers are all part
of a closed loop system that cannot be accessed by hackers. The combined intelligence watch
center gathers intelligence information from
other US sources, including surveillance
satellites, to assist the command center
in correlating and analyzing events around the world. For example, they often
warn the command center before a country is about
to test a ballistic missile. The weather support
unit performs two valuable functions. They monitor geophysical
and space weather elements, such as solar flares,
that may affect the performance of the
defense support program warning satellites. Now, our satellites in space
will pick up that solar flare, and it could look like
the launch of an ICBM or a Submarine-launched
Ballistic Missile. But our people are smart enough
to know that, before they would say that's an SLBM, they'll
talk with intelligence to see if they have an understanding
of where submarines may be. They'll talk with the weather
people who, in this case, would say, you have a solar
flare that's glinting off of a calm ocean surface. And it may look like
a missile launch. NARRATOR: The weather support
unit also continuously monitors the weather in North America. In some instances, the unit
will confirm that severe weather could be the reason that a plane
is not on a planned flight path and appears as an unknown. In 1981, NORAD's name changed. Though its acronym
stayed the same, NORAD's name was altered from
North American Air Defense Command to North American
Aerospace Defense Command to reflect its
increased responsibility in the area of space
surveillance and control. Since 1985, the US space
command has supported NORAD in these two missions. The US Space Command
provides the DSP constellation. They provide the early warning
radars, the ballistic warning radars, and the submarine
launch ballistic missile radars, plus a very elaborate
intelligence system that is able to tap sources
worldwide through other means that may be space-based to
assist in confirming what these objects are. So without to the
US Space Command, it would be impossible for NORAD
to do that particular mission. NARRATOR: US Space Command
is a unified command composed of members of all of
the US armed forces. They also operate the
Space Control Center in Cheyenne Mountain. The primary mission of
the Space Control Center is space surveillance. We're responsible for tracking
all man-made objects that rotate around planet Earth. We've been doing this since
1957 when Russia put up Sputnik. That was catalog
object number one. The newest object that
we're currently tracking on, some 40 years later, is
object number 24,808, which is a Norwegian
communication satellite. NARRATOR: Objects are tracked
with both radar sensors and deep space
electro-optical sensors that work much like a telescope. Incredibly, the
near-Earth sensors can track objects the size
of this bolt 600 miles above the Earth. On this display is the 24
satellite GPS constellation, which is a navigation
constellation owned by the United States. Each of these satellites
is indicated by a number. And the space trace is
indicated by this line. And you can imagine
what this would look like with 8,000 objects
that we're currently tracking on. NARRATOR: The Space
Control Center has supported every
space shuttle mission by providing collision
avoidance information to NASA. Ironically, the Center
now provides the same type of information to our
former adversaries in Russia in support of
the Mir Space Station. The Space Control Center
is also responsible for reentry assessments, or the
prediction of when and where an object will re-enter
the atmosphere. This is done for two reasons. First of all, the
Space Control Center needs to have an up-to-date
catalog of what is in space. The second reason is to comply
with the 1971 Nuclear Risk Reduction Treaty between the
US and the former Soviet Union. If it appears that an object
will re-enter over Russia, they are notified in advance
so that they do not mistake it for an ICBM's warhead. The missile warning center
inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex has an equally
important mission. Their job is to report on space
launches, strategic and missile launches, and nuclear
detonations around the world. One of their most
important tools is the DSP, or Defense
Support Program, satellite. These 2 and 1/2 ton satellites
use infrared sensors to detect the heat signature
of a ballistic missile during its boost phase. They are on station
approximately 22,300 miles above the equator in
a geostationary orbit and are spaced to provide
overlapping coverage. Because they are traveling at
the same speed as the rotating Earth, they essentially
remain in the same location at all times like ever-present
electronic sentinels. In addition to the DSPs, the
missile warning center also utilizes the ballistic missile
early warning system, which is built in the early 1960s. These three sites at Clear,
Alaska, Tully, Greenland, and Fylingdales, England provide
overlapping coverage zones that extend over 2,600 miles
into the Soviet Union's Arctic regions. Two more sites on the East
and West coasts of the US provide coverage of the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, respectively. They are on the lookout for
Sea-launced Ballistic Missiles, or SLBMs. This second independent
system makes it possible to verify a missile
event by a dual phenomenology method. And by dual phenomenology,
what we're talking about is using two different
types of technologies, two different types of systems
to confirm that, in fact, a missile event has occurred. For example, when the missile
is first launched from wherever that may occur, it's going to
be picked up by our Defense Support Program satellites. But before we would say that
North America is under attack, we require a confirmation of
that from our surveillance radars that we have
around North America. Hence the term
dual phenomenology. NARRATOR: The missile
warning center is responsible for evaluating
incoming missile event information and quickly
passing it down the line. So from the time a satellite
picks up a launch worldwide, somebody processes
that on the ground, sends it to us here
in the missile warning center we inform
the command center, the command center
makes an assessment, and we inform national command
authorities has to happen in under four minutes. NARRATOR: On average the missile
warning center monitors over 200 missile events a year. The center is divided into
theater and strategic missile sections. The strategic missile
warning system evaluates any launch that may
be a threat to North America, while the theater
section monitors areas where US, Canadian, or
Allied forces may be at risk. If a missile can travel more
than 2,100 nautical miles, it's considered a
strategic weapon. The biggest difference between a
strategic and a theater missile launch is the flight time. While an ICBM might
require 30 minutes or more to go from one
continent to another, a theater missile,
like the Scud, might only be in the
air for a few minutes. Therefore, theater
commanders receive notification of a missile launch
directly from DSP satellites. NORAD then provides additional
details such as the time and location of an impact. The third major warning center
that contributes to the NORAD mission is the Air
Defense Operations Center. Once NORAD's
principal component, their responsibility today
is the command and control for the air surveillance
and air defense network for North America. Today, Air Defense Command's
job is even more challenging due to the emergence of a
dangerous new airborne threat to North America. Cruise missiles are fast,
stealthy, low-flying missiles that could be armed
with a nuclear warhead. They are very
accurate and could be launched from a great distance
by enemy ships or bombers. They are extremely difficult to
detect because of their size. Very, very small
radar cross-section. So you have two challenges. One is to track the--
the launching platform. And the second part is to
track the missile itself. It's a technological challenge. And NORAD has been adapting
to meet that challenge. NARRATOR: US and
Canadian leaders are quite concerned about the
proliferation of these weapons and ballistic missiles. By the year 2000, nearly
20 nations around the world could have both ballistic
missile capabilities and nuclear weapons. And while today
we don't anticipate a threat against our shores, in
the future, as these missiles become more and more
prevalent not only to nations but the terrorist groups, the
risk to our country increases. We just need to
think about this. I'm not saying we need to
build a defense tomorrow. I'm just saying, that's a job we
have a job in NORAD to protect the borders of our country and
the airspace above our nation and above Canada. And that's what
NORAD's future is-- worrying about ballistic
missiles from rogue nations, and worrying about the
tremendous expansion and the proliferation of
cruise missiles and the risk to our country from
those cruise missiles. The time to start worrying
about and thinking about it is now, not after the first
one lands on our soil. NARRATOR: Though the concept
of mutually assured destruction helped deter war with
the former Soviet Union, that kind of deterrence strategy
would have little or no effect on terrorists. And there's always the worry
of a missile being accidentally launched from somewhere. A lot of people think there's
a-- a red button here and that we are the ones that push
the button that would start the war. Let me assure you, there--
there are no red buttons that do those sorts of things here. We are in the warning business. And we provide this information
to our nation's leaders who then make the determination
as to whether or not we wish to respond in kind. Interestingly
enough, I find that, in discussions with people
around the country-- and we take surveys-- we find that about 70% of
our population in our country thinks that we have a
missile defense system today. And the reason they think that
is that they watch the Gulf War. They saw the patriots firing
against the scud missiles. And so they naturally think
that if we could protect forces in a place like Saudi
Arabia, we can obviously protect our population. Well, protecting against those
kinds of missiles as opposed to the kinds of missiles,
the ballistic missiles that I'm talking about that
would come over great distances and travel very fast-- we're talking about a whole
different kind of a capability here. And clearly, we do not have
that capability in this nation today. NARRATOR: The US
government is currently studying the
feasibility of creating an anti-ballistic
missile defense system. If it is developed, most experts
believe that it will probably be operated from Cheyenne
Mountain, where its deployment would be supported by the assets
of both NORAD and US Space Command. Once again, NORAD's
mission would be adapted to meet a new challenge. I believe NORAD still has a
valid mission in the post-cold war world. The nature of the
threat changes. The nature of the technology to
meet that threat also changes. And NORAD has demonstrated
over the last 40 years a clear capability to adapt
its mission to new threats. One of the main reasons
why a sovereign nation fields a military is for
protection of the homeland. And the things that we're
doing in this mountain today are accomplishing
those goals today. And they're just
as important today as they were 10 years ago. And they'll be just as
important 10 years from now. NARRATOR: There's no question
that NORAD will continue to play an important
role in the future. But as one walks through
this subterranean maze, it's hard not to
think of the past and a frightening era when
the unthinkable was thinkable and two mighty superpowers
prepared for armageddon. As one contemplates
NORAD's significance, a truth emerges that is
both simple and profound. We're all still here. [music playing]
