US ARADCOM, Ent AFB (demolished) - Colorado Springs, CO
Posted by: 
Outspoken1
N 38° 50.356 W 104° 47.739
13S E 517734 N 4298959
Ent AFB was closed, demolished and the property transferred to the current US Olympic Training Center.
Waymark Code: WMG8W7
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 01/30/2013
Views: 17
"Ent Air Force Base was a United States Army Air Forces installation during World War II and a Air Force installation during the Cold War at the site of a closed sanatorium along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. In addition to the ADCOM & NORAD operations centers and the SPADATS Operation Center, the installation was the site of command headquarters of ADCOM, ARAACOM, and NORAD; as well as the Fifteenth Air Force of Strategic Air Command and the Fourteenth Aerospace Force of Aerospace Defense Command.
United States defense plans in 1945 and November 1946 "recommended moving ADC Headquarters from Mitchel Field to a more central location…in a protected command center … designed to withstand attack by all foreseeable weapons" (e.g., "German A-4 type" missiles). On November 10, 1950, Generals Vandenberg and Twining notified General Whitehead that "the Air Force had approved activation of a separate Air Defense Command [from CONAC] with headquarters on Ent". The ADC Major Command was re-established on January 1, 1951, with the Mitchel Field ADC headquarters moving to Ent on 8 January 1951. Mitchel's Army Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command headquarters moved to one room at Ent in January 1951 and in February the commander's staff began using the downtown Antlers Hotel until August 1953. Face-smile.svg Ent's building used for the 1951 air defense center was replaced in May 1954 with a "much improved 15,000-square-foot concrete block" Combat Operations Center (COC) (by 1961, an image of the COC's "Plexiglass plotting board" was transmitted to SAC's command post.)
Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) was "activated in Colorado Springs" after the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed to establish a "joint service command for air defense". CONAD had "control of Air Force Air Defense Command forces, Army Anti-Aircraft Command forces, and Naval air defense forces" on September 1, 1954 (CONAD and ADC formally separated in 1956). Ent AFB had a golf course by 1954 (sold c.?1977 to the city), and the Ent Gun Club had sanctioned trapshoots by 1958 (Ent hosted the 1974 Armed Forces Skeet Championship.)
The "establishment of command headquarters" for NORAD was at Ent AFB on September 12, 1957, and the NORAD command center received SAGE Radar Network data from 8 regional AN/FSQ-8 systems. Adjacent to the NORAD center was the SPADATS Operation Center with the 496L Space Detection and Tracking System which began operations in July 1961 (building P4's annex, a former hospital building). Some of Ent's operations/units moved to the 1963 Chidlaw Building ½ mi (¾ km) south-southeast of Ent. (e.g., the COC to the 1963 NORAD Combined Operations Center.)]The SPADATS mission remaining at Ent began the move to the Cheyenne Mountain "Group III Space Defense Center" in April 1966 (fully operational at 0001Z, 6 February 1967). ADCOM's Interceptor safety magazine was being published at Ent in 1968 and in 1975, the base was renamed the "Ent Annex" of Peterson Air Force Base on April 1" (from (
visit link) )
NOTE: The location of Ent AFB is now part of the US Olympic Training Center. Some areas of the US Olympic Training Center are open to the public; others are restricted for security reasons. The coordinates above are for the public Visitor Center on the former grounds of Ent AFB.