[ad_1]
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Deep inside a command center that monitors everything from Russian bombers to North Korean missile launches, a handful of service members are preparing for a very different kind of flight pattern — one led by a jolly man in a red suit.
Each December, the North American Aerospace Defense Command — or NORAD — transforms part of its high-tech operations floor into a holiday command post dedicated to tracking Santa Claus. The same radar systems that protect North American airspace will soon be tuned to follow a sleigh moving at high speed from the North Pole.
The Santa mission, now approaching its 70th year, began by accident. In 1955, a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a phone number from a Sears advertisement inviting children to “call Santa.” The number, misprinted by one digit, rang the operations line of what was then the Continental Air Defense Command. When Col. Harry Shoup, the duty officer that night, realized kids were calling to talk to St. Nick, he played along — and a military tradition was born.
RUSSIAN AIRCRAFT FLY IN ALASKAN AIR DEFENSE IDENTIFICATION ZONE, US SAYS
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in NORAD Santa tracker phone calls from the White House in 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Today, the Santa Tracker is a global phenomenon that draws millions of online visitors and calls from children in more than 200 countries. But behind the festive lights and holiday cheer, NORAD’s real mission continues without pause — scanning the skies and seas 24 hours a day for potential threats to the U.S. and Canada.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command doesn’t need special equipment to find Santa — it uses the same technology that guards the continent every day.
Tracking begins with the North Warning System, a network of radar stations stretching across Alaska and northern Canada. Those sensors detect everything entering the northern approaches to the U.S. and Canada — including, once a…
[ad_2]
