NORAD on a mission to track Santa

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin doesn't pop up in U.S. airspace without NORAD being the first to know, and neither does Santa's sleigh.

Protecting North America from a surprise missile or air attack is a full-time job for the joint American-Canadian command at Peterson Air Force Base.

Except on Christmas Eve.

On that one night every year for more than 50 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command has an added mission: tracking Santa Claus' journey from the North Pole for millions of children and their parents in countries around the globe.

Last year, 10.6 million visitors from 212 countries and territories viewed NORAD's Santa tracking Web site - www.noradsanta.org - from Nov. 16 to Dec. 26. Ninety percent of those were on Christmas Eve.

It was the most viewed noncommercial Web site in the world on Christmas Eve, according to Google, which began sponsoring the site last year, said Air Force Reserve Maj. Stacia Reddish, who oversees NORAD's tracking of Santa.
It's a lot of responsibility even for NORAD, especially considering it never asked for it.

The tradition began in 1955 with NORAD's predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, when Col. Harry Shoup got the first call by accident. Sears-Roebuck put an ad in The Gazette that said something like, "Hey kiddies, do you want to talk to Santa? Dial this number."

The number was off by one digit. It rang into the defense command's operations center.

Instead of saying "wrong number," Shoup, according to NORAD's official Santa tracking history, said, "I'll check the radars."

In those days, the command relied on ground radar stations posted across Canada to warn of a threat coming over the Arctic Circle. Monitoring Santa's launch from the North Pole seemed like a natural.

In the next few years, more radar stations were added, and Canada and the United States agreed to form NORAD in 1958. With the emergence of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the early 1960s, NORAD went to a space-based surveillance missile warning system and in recent years took on maritime monitoring.

All the better to track Santa worldwide.

In recent years, a Santa-tracker Web site was created and volunteers were recruited to answer the phone and e-mails.

Last year, 1,012 volunteers answered 94,743 phone calls and 10,326 e-mails, a fraction of the 140,000 e-mail messages received, Reddish said. Those were record numbers for the program, which is corporate funded.

Google translates the Web site into seven languages.

Globelink Foreign Language Center provides audio translations for the site. Booz Allen Hamilton designed the site and Verizon donates the toll-free phone number. In addition, Canada Post this year will provide responses to e-mails to Santa, Reddish said.

The seven languages are English, Spanish, France, German, Japanese, Italian, and, for the first time, Chinese.

Although the most site visits come from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, Reddish said Chinese visitors spend the most time per visit.

Santa will launch this year at 4 a.m. MST from the North Pole "per coordination with the North Pole staff," Reddish said.

"We use the same technology NORAD uses on a day-to-day basis," she said.

NORAD said in a news release that Santa usually starts at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean and travels west to the South Pacific, then to New Zealand and Australia. After that, he goes to Japan, Asia, Africa and on to Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Mexico and Central and South America.

"It is purely a mission of good will," Reddish said. "It's something that children the world over love to do on Christmas Eve. It reaches the young audience of the world. It just lets them know what NORAD does and puts a positive note in their mind about NORAD."

In the first 10 days the Web site was up this year, it attracted 500,000 visitors, she said. That's 10 times the number that NORAD's site - www.norad.mil - draws per month, NORAD spokesman Mike Kucharek said.