Cheyenne Mountain Complex Alien

NORAD & USNORTHCOM Alternate Joint Operations Center (AJOC), Cheyenne Mountain Complex · Other · 2008-present

Worn by personnel assigned to or working inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, this patch renders the granite mountain's most famous features in thread: the tunnel through Colorado granite and one of the two 25-ton blast doors, rated to close in about 45 seconds against a nuclear detonation. Blasted into the rock between 1961 and 1966 and fully operational as NORAD's Combat Operations Center on 6 February 1967, the complex handed daily watch duties to Peterson in the 2000s and was redesignated the NORAD and USNORTHCOM alternate command center — today the Alternate Joint Operations Center, kept warm as the wartime fallback and crew qualification site. The grey visitor throwing a peace sign is the in-house answer to decades of rumor that the mountain hides something extraterrestrial; the crews lean into it, and a stuffed alien in a jar has sat in front of the director's desk as a standing joke. The installation itself was redesignated Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station on 26 July 2021.