Behind the Wings; North American Aerospace Defense Command

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Now, I say this a lot, but how cool is this? This is the Lieutenant Zach Farrell, Lieutenant General Christopher Coats, the amazing Jean Cranes. You've never seen Aerospace like this. Hi, welcome back to Wings over the Rockies, my favorite place in the world. You are going to totally dig this episode because it's on Noorad. Now, what is Noorad? Well, we're going to get to that in a minute, but let's do a little bit of a history lesson here. At the end of World War II, we had not been bombed by any power except the Japanese and shelled by the Japanese and German submarines.

When you think about it, we got really, really lucky. We didn't have to go through any of the horrendous bombing campaigns that Germany, Great Britain, Italy went through. We just kind of sat back here, sheltered from the rest of the war by two gigantic oceans. Well, that started to come to an end in 1945. We quickly discovered that the Germans were leaps and bounds ahead of us in technology, the V2 rocket, the America bomber. What was the best way to defend yourself in the late 1940s? Radar. We got with Canada and we started to develop a system that they called the DuLine. And it was actually three sets of radar. There was the DuLine, which was the distant early warning line, the pine tree line, and then the mid-Canada line. Well, that was all great when we were worried about Russian bombers. But in 1957, when the Russians launched their first ICBM, the Intercontinental Ballistic

Missile, things got a little bit dicey, so what do you do? You come up with Norad. What does that mean? Well, that, my friends, is what we are going to discover today. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, you know it as Norad, was first approved by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1957. At the time, it was called the North American Air Defense Command and had its headquarters at Int Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Following construction of an underground facility at Cheyenne Mountain in the 1960s, Norad's Command post moved under the mountain to monitor the airspace over Canada and the United States. In 2008, Norad moved its day-to-day operations to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs and re-designated Cheyenne Mountain as an Air Force station in the Backup Command Center.

Aside from assessing daily aerospace threats, Norad is also responsible for tracking Santa with their Norad Track Santa program. And so we use Norad's standard equipment to track Santa, the stuff that we use to protect and defend North America every day of the year. To learn more about Norad's mission, let's head over to their headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base and talk with the deputy commander, Lieutenant General Christopher Coates. So what is the overarching mission of Norad? Norad's mission has always been the defense of our nations, Canada and the United States officer, the defense of the homelands. What we've seen over the last year or two, and it's reflected both in the Canadian defense policy, strong, secure, engaged in the U.S. national defense strategy, is that our nations

our homeland is no longer a sanctuary. We noted that our adversaries, our potential adversaries, China and Russia in particular, have developed capabilities to be able to hold us at risk here in North America with very advanced weapons systems by combining their capabilities. So they operate, as we would say, across different domains, both from at sea holding our space assets at risk, operating in the cyber domain and the information domain. And the Norad and our classic air defense mission is challenged, but in ways that we haven't been before, as all of these threats come together at once. And so we're in the midst of a transformation of Norad. Refocusing on our ability to defend the homeland, reduce that risk down to an acceptable level, really to be able to deter threats before they manifest themselves. One of the things that our sharp viewers, of which they all are sharp, are going to catch

on, is that I said, Norad is here at Peterson. Most people think Cheyenne Mountain, they've seen Stargate SG1, they've seen all these Hollywood movies, and it's always in the mountain. Why have you guys taken yourselves out of the mountain and come down here? Well, first, what I'd say is, Norad isn't just either in the mountain or here at Peterson. Norad is all the way from Alaska down to Tindallair Force Base, and we even have people in Greenland at Tule Air Base in Greenland. So Norad's bigger than just where the headquarters are. Headquarters are happy to be. But you're right. For a long time, Norad headquarters in our operations center was inside Cheyenne Mountain. To the events of 9-11, the role of Norad expanded slightly to include the defense, the air defense of our internal area at the same time. It was seen to be more effective at the time to move the operations center out of Cheyenne Mountain, the principal operations center into Peterson Air Force Base here in the basement of the building we're in right now.

So we've operated here for about 15 years with the operations center, but we maintain the command center in Cheyenne Mountain. It's our alternate command center. We use it quite frequently to make sure that it's all up and ready to go. Can do the job it has to do, and there's some reasons why Cheyenne Mountain was important and remains important for Norad. What's your favorite part about the job? There's sort of two aspects. The first is the problem solving, and at the level that I get to see things interplayed is the strategic mixing with the tactical. So what are our governments expecting of us? What are the resources we've been given, and how do we balance that with what's happening globally, and ensuring that we're at the right place at the right time, providing the right information to our decision makers. Secondly, and perhaps what matters the most is we're here protecting our nations, our homeland. And so while military operations everywhere are important, the job we get up for in the morning is making sure that our citizens are safe, and that's super, super rewarding. So one of the things, if you're in the military, if you're a sports person, you know that constant

training is what keeps you sharp, and you guys are constantly running training exercises here, and what you call into C2, which is kind of where everything happens, and we have been lucky enough to be told that we may be able to go down there. I am pretty excited because that is not something that almost anybody gets to go to. So as much as I've enjoyed speaking with you, I want to see how far I can get without being tackled. So sir, thank you so much. And if need be, can you get me out of the brig? We'll try. Okay, thank you. What does into C2C2 actually stand for? So N2C2 stands for the NORAD and U.S. Northcom Current Operations Center. And what we do here is essentially all domain, situational awareness, and threat characterization. If I can put it very broadly like that. We're watching for Russian bombers, for missile attacks to North America, or for domestic

threats. So aircraft, think of like 9-11, aircraft flying around in the airspace, violating certain airspace rules, or doing anything that could be a threat. That's what I'm assuming all of these screens are doing. So what are we looking at up there? Unfortunately, we can only show you the unclassified stuff that we normally do. Normally, we work at a much higher security level, but what we have up there, we're always monitoring the news, because we can find out a lot of things about what's happening domestically on the news. One of the screens there with all the green dots on it shows all the air traffic within the continental United States right now. We also post up weather things or other information that pertains to missile warning and missile defense. What we have here in the command center is the command domain, which is run by a colonel. So in this case, colonel Brad Smith, who's my U.S. Air Force counterpart, my U.S. Air Force brother, our deputy command center director, who happens to be a Canadian today, Lieutenant Colonel Jodi Hanson.

We also have our enlisted controllers that help us deal with conferencing, managing the knowledge wall, those types of things. And then out on the floor, we have the rest of our domains. We have a land and maritime domain that looks for things, for example, southwest border, hurricanes, fires, floods, domestic terrorist attacks, any of those kind of things. We've got our air domain, which is primarily, therefore, defensive North American airspace, like Russian bombers or Operation Noble Eagle, and we'll talk a bit more about that in a bit. We've got meteorology. We've got a federally aviation administration representative. We've got cyber watch officer. We've got missile defense and missile and space warning. So we're keeping an eye on pretty much, when I mentioned earlier, all domain situational awareness. We want to know what's going on. Something that could be a security threat to North America 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So speaking of aircraft flying around, one of the terms that I've heard a lot is noble Eagle. What exactly is that?

Operation Noble Eagle is an operation that's been in place since 9-11, where NORAD has a rule of defending North America from any aerospace threat like that. So an aircraft that's hijacked, people that are lost or causing a potential disruption to air traffic flows, those types of things. So in reality, how often does that happen? A lot more often than you think, actually. Most of them are general aviation aircraft that don't really pay attention to the rules or the notices that are out there, but on average, about three to five times a week. Whoa, that's way more than I would have expected. So what happens when something like that pops up? Then what will happen is that that region will give us a call and say, hey, there's something weird going on, we may have a conversation about it, they may just say, hey, we're scrambling fighters, we're reacting to this, and then we'll do what's ringing out, what we call ringing out an Operation Noble Eagle conference. And what we do is we make sure that we get the right people with the right information. If we can't talk to them on the radio, then we'll try and intercept them with fighters or helicopters, depending on how fast and how high they are.

Nine times out of 10, what does it turn out to be? Just some guy not reading the notums, just not paying attention, not talking to the tower. I would probably say 99 and a half times out of 10, that's usually what it is, particularly if the president's traveling or if it's a temporary flight restricted area, that's not normally there. So we have a super bowl in Atlanta, people that normally fly around Atlanta aren't necessarily used to suddenly having more air restrictions. So if they're not reading the notums, they fly through the middle of the temporary flight restricted area, then we'll take action to make sure that we keep it secure. So we're lucky enough to be here on a day where you're going to run an exercise. And we would love to be a part of that in watch, is that okay? Absolutely, we run exercises all the time. The crews are highly proficient at it, they do this stuff every day, day in day out, and they're really good at it. Alright, let's go. This is actually going to be an exercise where like a small civilian aircraft is unresponsive and they're in restricted airspace.

So this scenario is restricted airspace in the area of Denver, beachcraft barren squawk 7500, which is a hijack code, and is unresponsive, and we're going through the steps, so okay. So if you look up on the screen, they've highlighted the track that's flying, the red circle is showing the temporary flight restricted area. Alright, car is tracking, EACs, please ring out and exercise onack, long pull. Copy exercises onack, still access onack? So an Operation Noble Eagle conference is the means that we use to share information between all the involved security agents. So that's onack? Right, so that's what onack stands for. They'll ring out all of the different stations. So it's permanent home land security, it's transportation security agency, all of those types of FAA, FBI, whoever that are involved, so that if anybody has information that can pass and it'll help with decision making, what the CCD has done is he just labeled it

as a target of interest, which now means that we've officially kicked off the Operation Noble Eagle. Okay, so the controllers at the sectors are controlling the fighter, so they're talking to the fighter saying, okay, your mission is to go intercept and inspect. At this point, we're assuming that they're a threat until we can confirm that they're not. And the vast majority cases, obviously, they're not. It's not just general aviation aircraft, sometimes we have airliners that miss a frequency change over those kind of things. Those ones are tricky. If they're going into Washington, into Reagan National, like right downtown, they're on flight planner, they're on a standard arrival, they got 150 passengers in the back, but they're not talking to the right people, we start to get a little bit nervous. We're expecting, he's going to probably, he's going to roll it on to his frequency, expecting to talk to tower, and he's not, realizes on the wrong frequency, and then everybody kind of switches over and then we breathe a sigh of relief, right, but we're always ready to react, because we never know, right, 9-11 showed that. We have to be ready to react at any time.

But what we'll do is, depending on the speed of the target, if the F16s, they'll do an identification and say, okay, in this case, it's a beach barren, here's what I see in the cockpit. If you guys slumped over the controls, or I see a bad looking dude with a gun, or whatever the scenario happens to be, we're eminent away, now we're prepared to see what the fighters are going to tell us, to help build situational awareness, okay, is this really a bad guy? What's going on? So, the fighters intercepted, got his attention, he realized he's squawked the wrong code, passed, you know, he's not talking to air traffic control now, so he's in contact with the airplane, and we've kind of done our part of it, and then the FAA will deal with, you know, making sure you get safe there on the ground and diverting him, is that okay?

So, at this point, or will the 16s break off, or will they actually follow him to Fort Morgan? Typically, if he's compliant and in contact with air traffic control, then they'll carry on with whatever mission they were doing before. All right, the training exercise is complete, but you know what's cooler than seeing an intercept from inside into situ, seeing it from the skies. Get ready, because I'm heading up with pilot Alan Wimmer to experience an intercept by an F-16 from the cockpit of this Cessna 182. Yeah, great data flying, all beautiful. So, we're flying with Alan Wimmer today, and Alan flew F-16s for the Air Force, but tell us what you're doing now. So, our time from the Air Force three years ago, and I took a job as a civil servant, so now I'm a civilian employee of the Air Force. I work in headquarters, North America, North American Air Force Defense Command, as your episode is about, and one of the duties that I perform there is to be a part of what we call the Baron team, as in Red Baron. Oh, yeah.

Okay, the role of a bad guy to try and train our air defense units, as well as periodically do evaluations of their performance. So, who are we going to be today? So, today we are simulating some civilians who are out enjoying a beautiful day. We're out flying to a destination, or just flying in the local area, and we're unaware that a temporary flight restriction has been put up. That is a temporarily restricted airspace that we're not allowed to go into, right? And for some reason, that has been declared as such. Typically, that'll be associated with a national special security event. Those are assessed and declared by the Department of Homeland Security. And if they need air defense, nor I will provide that. Okay. So, at this point, I probably should break in and say, it's always good to reach your no-dems. Absolutely. Those temporary flight restrictions will always be posted on the no-dems. Let's just go ahead and make the FAA happy and say, absolute. Silence.

Please reach your no-dems. Accidents happen. Humans are what they are. So, our aerospace warning mission is to detect anybody that's coming along, and then our aerospace control mission has what apply in the scenario today is that person stumbling into the airspace. Now we need to figure out what's going on. Is this just an accident? Is this someone who might have malintent? Is it someone who's going to comply with our instructions? Yes or no? And then the scenario will play out from there. Do we have a medical emergency? I mean, who knows? And so, we'll train the pilots at Buckley. We'll train to all sorts of those. We'll train to an incapacitated pilot with someone who's not a pilot who's now flying the airplane. You hope. I need help. Yeah. And they're happy to have it. I do. We'll train to a pilot, a student pilot who's lost. I don't know where I'm at. I'm getting low on fuel. Can you please help me find a piece of runway to land on? Then we'll train to drug runners. We'll train to folks who are trying to do something illicitory legal and not compliant. And then we'll train to the person who literally has malintent.

I think a lot of people are aware that intercepts happen, but I don't think they're aware that they happen with small aircraft like this. I don't think they're aware either, but what the small aircraft is just not something that you see or hear about very often. So in general, are they going to be kind of at our 10 or 11? Well, you're not going to see them by 10 until they want you to. So in general, they're going to approach from behind. Most of the ins are cruising along the coast side. Most of them aren't checking six. Doing the scan. And so they're going to approach from our left side. And the first time they approach us will most likely be to take a look at us, read a detail number, verify who we are, relay that data to the command and control authorities and tell them first off what they're seeing. Who is this? What are they doing? What do they look like? Do they look like they have a problem? What's a detail number? Immediately, DHS is on that conference as you saw the operational legal conference from the command center.

DHS will be on there as soon as somebody gets a tail number, the FAA and the DHS are both running that. They know who owns it. They know where that airplane's been, what it's done, what that power's done. And so we'll begin to assess what we think is going on here. The command and control authorities will begin that assessment based on all of that data. And the fifth one, we are ready and the sixth one, we are ready to use the real weapon state. Copy what we're going to say for Baron is ready in the west. That's what I want to hear. Fight on. Okay, here we go. We're playing out the scenario now. Okay, here we go. 500 unit. The airplane is next. 9000 traction. Okay, 1231500. That is a blanket warning.

They're trying to contact us on the emergency frequency. So for the scenario today, we're not listening. Yeah. So they're going to have to take some additional measures to number one, let us know they're here at number two gain our compliance. So we're either not monitoring guard. We're ignoring. We have a bad intent. A medical emergency or we're simply unable unable to comply. Here comes up our left side. Again, normally I wouldn't be looking behind me as a civilian. He's rocking his rocking his wings and he's telling us he wants us to follow him right now. Wow. How cool is that? I got to say that I saw him rocking his wings. You did, but I was more impressed with the fact that there was an S16 that close. So I can I can kind of see where somebody would go. So now he just read our tail number back to us. Oh, so he read the tail number.

And now he's trying to make sure we know who he's talking to. Like, oh, by the way, hey, buddy. So we're going to let this go a little further here. I'm not up on that frequency yet. I'm playing out the role of conversation we just have. Where that's pretty cool. I've never seen that, but I wish I had my camera out. And let's see how they how to handle it. So this would be what we call a headbutt, which is an ask of a storm maneuver, which is at this point, he's probably attempted to guide us away. Right. We have not complied. Now he's going to go across our nose, which is generating a traffic conflict to make the point to us that there's a problem here. You need to follow me. Yeah. Come on to the left side. So he's rocking his wings saying, you need to follow me. Now that is really cool. And he's going, oh, no, he's dispensing. We're up in players. We're in trouble now. That is a signal that we're in serious trouble. We are going to follow this guy before he decides. He needs to escalate. Yeah.

That's not good. While it's cool to see an S16, it's probably, that probably means we're doing something wrong. We have done something wrong to make him rejoin on us. And so we're going to comply with whatever he needs us to do at this point. Hey, this has been an awesome day and an awesome flight. And we have seen some things that not everybody gets to see, which is probably good, because if you saw what we did, you've done something wrong. Again, read the notes, people. Alan, thank you so much. A pleasure. This has been a great, great flight. And thank you to the minute women of NORAD keeping a safe 24-7365, great job, and buckley in the 120. You guys did a great job today. It was really fun to see you close up. Hopefully, I'll never have to see it again. If there is an aerospace threat to North America, they are prepared for it.

With headquarters in Colorado, NORAD ensures the air sovereignty and coordinates the air defense of the entire continent. From watching a training scenario, from inside NORAD's command center, to jumping into the cockpit of a Cessna 182 to experience an S16 intercept, we've taken you behind the wings of North American Aerospace Defense Command. Oh, it's who was the best. You're not the only guy in this building who hair that long, right? Oh, really? You're also a natural eye camera. You want to join the team? I'll do whatever I want you to do. Here we go. Here we go. Little learners can read, write, talk, sing, and play

at Arrepoho Libraries. Make a play date, join a story time. Build a masterpiece and present a puppet show all in one morning. More at ArrepohoLibrarys.org. Do Denver's 300 days of sunshine make the smiles a little wider? They definitely make the energy here stronger. So you can enjoy the blue skies and mountain view sunsets. Denver, soak it all in.