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.
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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 of 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 a fast-moving sleigh departing the Arctic once a year.
From there, NORAD's Space-Based Infrared System satellites pick up the heat signature - described tongue-in-cheek each year as Rudolph's nose - and relay that data to the operations center at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs.
The same systems that track ballistic missile launches and foreign aircraft feed the Santa map millions of families follow each Christmas Eve. The website and app, NORADSanta.org, draw millions of visits worldwide, supported by partnerships with private-sector tech companies to handle the data load.
For the troops and civilians who staff NORAD's operations center, the holiday season looks different from most. The command never shuts down; officers, radar technicians and support staff work through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day just as they do any other time of year.
While much of the focus turns to Santa tracking, the real work continues in the background - scanning radar feeds, monitoring satellite data and staying ready to respond to any threat that might appear. Most of the roughly 1,500 people assigned to NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Space Force Base and nearby Cheyenne Mountain take at least part of a holiday shift, trading hours so others can spend time with family.
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Still, the Santa operation brings a change of pace. Hundreds of volunteers - many of them military spouses, retirees and local community members - come into the command center each year to answer calls and messages from children around the world. The phone lines open on Christmas Eve, and volunteers work in shifts to handle thousands of questions about Santa's location.
The room looks a little different that night: screens glow with maps of the sleigh's route, phones ring constantly and there are cookies and coffee between the workstations. For a few hours, a command built for high-stakes warning and response turns into a small slice of holiday normalcy, even as the mission carries on.
That same command routine was recently dramatized in the new Netflix film "A House of Dynamite." In the movie, a single unidentified missile triggers a cascade of decisions across the command center, highlighting how fragile the system can appear when seconds count.
The Missile Defense Agency, however, pushed back on the film's portrayal of a failed interceptor test. An internal memo noted a scene claiming a 50% chance of interception, arguing that, in reality, U.S. missile defense systems have "displayed a 100% accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade."
So, yes, NORAD is tracking holiday cheer and ensuring the foundation of American readiness stays intact. On the floor where the phones are answered, and the consoles stay lit, the message is simpler: Someone is always on watch.
