The 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 barbershop 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.

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.”

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.

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.