There’s no need to worry about mysterious drones recently seen over New Jersey, a U.S. Air Force general said Tuesday, as the annual tradition of “tracking down” St. Nick gets underway.
Gen. Gregory Guillot’s reassurances came as the joint US-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said Santa and his reindeer had stopped in Russia and Iran after visiting countries in the east including Japan, North Korea and Indonesia.
By 0100 GMT on Christmas Day, Santa was heading north through Brazil toward Guyana, according to the tracker.
Santa’s flight this year comes after weeks of mysterious sightings of alleged drones in the US state of New Jersey, sparking global curiosity even as several reported incidents have been debunked.
“Of course we are concerned about drones and anything else in the air,” NORAD Gilo commander told Fox News. “But I don’t anticipate any difficulty at all with drones for Santa this year.”
NORAD’s Santa tracker dates back to 1955, when a Colorado newspaper ad printed a phone number to connect children with Santa — but mistakenly directed them to the Joint Military Nerve Center hotline.
The director of operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoop, answered the phone and quickly realized that the child calling had the wrong number.
“But he didn’t want to bother him. So he started talking to the little boy and relaying information” about Santa’s location, Canadian Air Force Maj. Gen. William Radev, the current director of NORAD operations, told AFP on Tuesday.
“And then he talked to the rest of the staff there and said, ‘Please, we’re going to take phone calls today… Let’s get started on doing this.’”
All over the world
The interest has become global. Last year, NORAD’s updated Santa tracking website noradsanta.org — which includes a 3D map showing Santa’s movements in real time and a ticker showing how many gifts have been delivered — received 20.6 million visits, and more than 400,000 calls were made to the number. -A toll-free number according to Radev.
“We get calls from all over the world and they really want to know where Santa is,” he said.
When it’s not spreading holiday cheer, NORAD conducts surveillance and warning operations in air and sea space — including monitoring missile launches from North Korea, something Santa may have had in mind when he drove his reindeer-drawn sleigh over Pyongyang.
Radev, who embraces the Christmas spirit, said NORAD’s infrared-capable satellites can monitor Santa’s progress in part because “Rudolph’s nose gives the same signature, so we use that to track him around the world.”
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, said on social media that NORAD “always does a great job helping us monitor Santa’s navigational bearing and direction in the sky above.”
This year, as he did last Christmas, US President Joe Biden joined the fun at NORAD, taking calls from children.
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