"We're treating it as if we're deployed in the Middle East or anywhere else," Brig. Gen. Pete Fesler said when describing how the 130 or so service members under his command were self isolating during the coronavirus pandemic. Gen. Fesler is one of the senior leaders of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a command tasked with early warning in the event of an attack against the United States, particularly from intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In the event of a nuclear attack, a command like NORAD simply cannot be caught flat footed with critical personnel sidelined as they are sick with COVID-19. This is why a part of the command has quarantined itself, to ensure that they remain alert and ready to perform their duties. While these service members typically work at Paterson Air Force base, they are now sequestered inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex which is a series of tunnels and bunkers literally bored into a mountain and able to survive a nuclear strike.
"Once we started recognizing the trajectory change and the spread of covid-19, that's when we recognized the need to take measures to prepare our military capability and protect it in the event that we had a worst-case scenario," Gen. Fesler recently told The Washington Post which reported that the 130 quarantined members of the command are further isolated into 15 person groups who do not have face to face contact with one another.
For now, these troops are at least permitted to step out of the bunker and see sunlight, permitted they maintain their social distancing.
"Their families sometimes 'dead drop' items for them in the trunk of their parked cars. On one recent occasion, Fesler's family left him a soccer ball and T-shirts," the Washington Post reported.