❒ Tracking service lets children follow progress of world’s most famous gift giver

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

Some of the top officers at the North American Aerospace Defense Command will be ready Christmas Eve to track Santa Claus as he makes his around-the-world trip to deliver gifts.

NORAD’s directorate of public affairs and USNORTHCOM Public Affairs Office said NORAD’s “Tracks Santa” operations center will be operational through Christmas Eve, providing audio, video and “Santa Cam” views.

Participating in the operations are such senior NORAD and USNORTHCOM officers as General Chuck Jacoby, commander; Maj. Gen. Charles Luckey, chief of staff; Lt. Gen. Alain Parent, deputy commander, NORAD; and Lt. Gen. Michael Dubie, deputy commander, USNORTHCOM.

NORAD starts its Santa Tracker with its radar system, the North Warning System that has 47 installations across Canada and Alaska.

NORAD officials say Santa is the only one who knows the route he will fly this year, so the agency can’t predict when the jolly old elf will arrive at any particular home.

While historically Santa begins at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean and travels generally to the west, his itinerary is affected by both weather and whether children are asleep.

“NORAD coordinates with Santa’s Elf Launch Staff to confirm his launch time, but from that point on, Santa calls the shots. We just track him,” one official said.

Once Santa Claus leaves the North Pole, NORAD uses the same satellites it employs to provide air warning of possible missile launches aimed at North America.

The satellites are in geo-synchronous orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, and are equipped with infrared sensors. Normally they would record the higher temperatures produced by a rocket or missile.

But on Christmas Eve, they’ll be tuned in to the special infrared signature produced by the unusually colored nose of the reindeer Rudolph.

“The satellites detect Rudolph’s bright red nose with no problem,” an agency spokesperson said.

Canadian NORAD fighter pilots, flying CF-18 planes, take off from Newfoundland to welcome Santa to North America. At other locations, other CF-18 pilots escort Santa’s sleigh.

Once Santa reaches the United States, American NORAD pilots flying either F-15s, F-16s or F-22s accompany the sleigh.

Santa and his reindeer fly much faster than any fighter pilot’s plane, one official admitted.

“Santa actually slows down for us to escort him,” he said.

But NORAD’s systems provide children “with a very good continuous picture of his whereabouts,” the official said.

“We’re the only organization that has the technology, the qualifications and the people to do it,” he said. “And we love it! NORAD is honored to be Santa’s official tracker!”

For more than 50 years, NORAD and the previous agency, the continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), have observed Santa Claus on his flight.

The program began by accident, when a Sears, Roebuck & Co. advertisement misprinted the telephone number to call Santa Claus.

Instead, the number was the CONAD commander-in-chief’s operations hotline.

That accident motivated Col. Harry Shoup, then director of operations, to have his staff check radar for indications of Santa’s presence as he flew away from the North Pole.

They discovered the sleigh is a “versatile, all-weather, multi-purpose vertical short-take-off and landing vehicle,” according to the agency’s official description. “It is capable of traveling vast distances without refueling, and is deployed, as far as we know, only on Dec. 24 and sometimes briefly for a test flight abut a month before Christmas.”

The youngsters who had called CONAD were given updates about Santa’s location. Rather than drop the program, Shoup and CONAD made it a tradition.

In 1958, the governments of the United States and Canada established a single air defense command for North America, NORAD, which continued the tradition.

Since 2009, the program has been conducted in Shoup’s memory as its first Santa Tracker. Two lead project officers manage the program.

In addition to tracking Santa’s Christmas Eve flight, more than 1,250 Canadian and American uniformed and civilian NORAD employees, family members and friends volunteer to answer phone calls, emails to noradtrackssanta@outlook.com and letters from children inquiring about Santa.

The volunteers and corporate licensees underwrite all costs.

The growth of the Internet now lets children visit NORAD’s Tracks Santa website.

Those wanting to watch may use the website www.noradsanta.org. Children also may call NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center beginning at 2 a.m. Pacific time Christmas Eve and concluding at 2 a.m. Christmas Day at 877-446-6723.