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Talk:Static War Headquarters Castlegate

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I removed the information below from the main article. I will readd it as I find appropriate references. Movementarian (Talk) 12:37, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As this bunker had been developed and combined as a NATO war commandpost this means that it had to offer maximum protection to its crew in all kinds of peacetime and wartime conditions.

In case of war and crisis Castlegate is not only the NATO leaderships hide-out but it also functions as a main signal relaypoint within NATO’s communications chain of command. The bunker has been built in a way that ensures its operational capacity for a long time in all conditions.

History The first bunker development and building plans have been made during the cold war era in 1962.

Initially it had been planned that NATO staffcommand, in peacetime located in Mönchengladbach Rheindahlen W-Germany at the joint headquarters (JHQ), would be transferred to the Castlegate bunker.

Bunker building plans had been approved in 1969 and the actual bunker construction took place between 1984 and 1992. The Bunker was operational already from 1988 but the infrastructure was not been completed until 1996 after installation and testing of all electronic and chemical filtering components.

Because of the end of the cold war and due to NATO’s budget cuts and restructuring Castlegates initial mission became obsolete. NATO’s JHQ Rheindahlen was reorganized and its units were transferred to other locations which changed the Castlegate mission completely.

As of 2007, NATO Joint Force Command Brunssum at Brunssum in the Netherlands will be transferred to the bunker in times of crisis and war.

Castlegate was built in the shape of a cube and measures 53 m in length, 45 m in width and 28 m in height. Its interior is divided into 6 stories and is equipped with all necessary supplies to house a crew of more than 500 military for at least 2 months. This way NATO’s leadership would be able to survive all possible nuclear attacks and even nerve gas attacks.

The infrastructure and the building were completely financed by NATO budgets and has been estimated at approximately 85 million Euros. A considerable percentage of the amount covered installation and operational testing of all electronical components and chemical filtering components.