NORAD officials say the command does plan to provide live tracking of Santa’s travels on Dec. 24, a program the bi-national command has maintained since 1955. The Website http://www.noradsanta.org/ already provides holiday games and activities and will begin live feeds with “up-to-the minute reports and streaming videos from key stops on Santa’s trip around the world,” says a NORAD release. In 2007, the NORAD Tracks Santa Web site received more than 10.6 million unique visitors from 212 countries. The NTS Operations Center, staffed by 1,012 volunteers last year, responded on Christmas Eve to nearly 95,000 phone calls and received 140,000 e-mails.
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
