Warning- incoming Santa!

Warning- incoming Santa!

Every year NORAD sets its sights on Santa.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a United States and Canada bi-national organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning and aerospace control for North America. Aerospace warning includes the detection, validation, and warning of attack against North America whether by aircraft, missiles, or space vehicles, through mutual support arrangements with other commands.

NORAD meticulously tracks the flightpath of Santa into and over the North American continent; his fate is up to NORAD to determine. Set against the cutting edge defence mechanisms NORAD has at its disposal (satellites, tracking stations, missiles, jets) Santa is ill-equipped. He may be able to drop a handful of tinsel to confuse radar signals; he might be able to unwrap and deploy gifted drones to act as decoys, but these would be ultimately of little effect.

And, as of this point there is less than one day before NORAD identifies and begins to track Santa, and the clock is ticking: see http://www.noradsanta.org/.

But Santa is safe, as NORAD’s intention is benign and is simply to ensure Santa and his sleigh safe passage in his task over the coming hours.

The Santa Claus tracking tradition started in 1955 after a local newspaper ran an ad for a department store Santa hot line. The ad included a special phone number- the rumour has it that the number was either a misprint, or a child dialled it incorrectly; either way children were being put through to the operations hot line to Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor.
The senior officer on duty at the time was Air Force Col. Harry Shoup. He took the first call and quickly figured out what had happened. When kids asked if they could speak to Santa, Shoup said he was helping Santa and told the kids his officers could see Santa on the radar screens as he headed south from the North Pole.

Local media heard of the calls and reported the story. The next year, calls came flooding in to Continental Air Defense Command from children who wanted to know where Santa was. A tradition was born -- a tradition NORAD assumed in 1957. Since then, the program has expanded gradually over the years until it hit the Internet in 1997 with one million hits.

(Thanks to the Norad.org.uk website for some of the above.)