Vanguard Magazine

30 JUNE/JULY 2020 www.vanguardcanada.com AIR politicians and scientific advisors were debating the location of early warning radars; and soon, air force officers began to consider integrated command and con- trol. NORAD actually began operations in 1957 as a purely military command exercising operational control of both nations' air defences. However, a formal inter-governmental agreement was soon negotiated. The NORAD Agreement thus dates back to May 12, 1958. Its early years were tumultuous, marked by American anger over Canadian hesitation in imple- menting its commitment to accept U.S. nuclear weapons for the CF-101 VooDoo and BOMARC Surface-to-Air Missile. Nevertheless, by 1965 NORAD was fully functioning as an essential component in U.S. deterrence strategy while offering a defence against surprise attack. Today NORAD is located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo- rado with the alternate command centre in nearby Cheyenne Mountain. Subordi- nate headquarters are located at bases in Alaska, Winnipeg and Florida, each staffed on a bi-national basis. NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command Today Over the decades, NORAD's air defence missions have evolved from basic air de- fence of ports and defence industries, to protecting the U.S. deterrent against "precursor" attacks designed to limit a U.S. counter strike, to preventing "de- capitation" strikes against the U.S. com- mand structure. Today NORAD missions are: aerospace warning; aerospace control; maritime warning. NORAD provides to the U.S. and Canadian national command authorities (the president and prime min- ister and their ministers of defence) unam- biguous aerospace warning in the form of an Integrated Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment (ITW/AA). This part of the NORAD mission constitutes an important element in maintaining strategic stability between the two large nuclear powers. NORAD's present disposition reflects the North American Air Defense Mod- ernization (NAADM) plan agreed in 1985, developed in large part to counter an emerging Soviet capability - long range Air-Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs). These could strike key targets at consid- erable range, renewing concern of a "de- capitation" strike against command and control and/or leadership. The NAADM entailed the replacement of the 1950's DEW Line with the new radars of the North Warning System (NWS) and the construction of Forward Operating Loca- tions to allow the deployment of USAF and RCAF fighters northwards to counter cruise missiles. The calm after the Cold War was not to last. A key policy inflection point was the Canadian decision after 9/11 not to adopt U.S. proposals for a completely integrat- ed continental defence structure. This led the U.S. to establish Northern Com- mand (NorthCom) in October 2002 for the defence of the U.S. The four-star U.S. general officer who commands North- Com is "double-hatted" as Commander NORAD. A second Canadian policy decision, an unexpected one - to decline participation in missile defence - also shaped NORAD's structure. After considerable discussion, it was agreed that Canadian military per- sonnel could take part in missile warning activities under NORAD but not in the active missile defence role under U.S. Northern Command. This anomaly re- mains a troubling incongruity in Colorado Springs. U.S. commanders have managed to make the bifurcated NORAD/North- Com missile warning and defence mission work, but this could become a serious pol- icy issue in the event a future commander (or Commander in Chief) considers the arrangement undesirable or unworkable. A third set of policy decisions was forced upon NORAD as a result of its failure to intercept the civil airliners used as weap- ons on September 11, 2001. After the Cold War, NORAD's fighter interceptors in the continental U.S. had been reduced in number and positioned primarily to identify unidentified aircraft approaching the U.S. In 2004, the National Commis- sion on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States concluded that the fighters were therefore unable to intercept the hijacked aircraft. Operation Noble Eagle increased the number of alert aircraft and devised an effective geographic distribution so that every major U.S. city was within a pre- scribed distance of a fighter base. Overview of Emerging Potential Threats Weighing the intentions of adversaries re- quires a broad analytic context including Today NORAD is located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado with the alternate command centre in nearby Cheyenne Mountain. Subordinate headquarters are located at bases in Alaska, Winnipeg and Florida, each staffed on a bi-national basis. The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command's headquarters. Photo: NORAD.

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