Military’s Elite Command Center Transforms for Annual Santa Tracking Mission

Deep inside a command center that monitors everything from Russian bombers to North Korean missile launches, a handful of service members are preparing for a very different kind of flight pattern — one led by a jolly man in a red suit.

Each December, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) transforms part of its high-tech operations floor into a holiday command post dedicated to tracking Santa Claus. The same radar systems that protect North American airspace will soon be tuned to follow a sleigh moving at high speed from the North Pole.

The Santa mission, now approaching its 70th year, began by accident. In 1955, a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a phone number from a Sears advertisement inviting children to “call Santa.” The number, misprinted by one digit, rang the operations line of what was then the Continental Air Defense Command. When Col. Harry Shoup, the duty officer that night, realized kids were calling to talk to St. Nick, he played along — and a military tradition was born.

Today, the Santa Tracker is a global phenomenon that draws millions of online visitors and calls from children in more than 200 countries. But behind the festive lights and holiday cheer, NORAD’s real mission continues without pause — scanning the skies and seas 24 hours a day for potential threats to the United States and Canada.

“We don’t need special equipment to find Santa,” explained a NORAD spokesperson. “We use the same technology that guards the continent every day.”

Tracking begins with the North Warning System, a network of radar stations stretching across Alaska and northern Canada. These sensors detect everything entering the northern approaches to North America — including, once a year, a fast-moving sleigh departing the Arctic.

From there, NORAD’s Space-Based Infrared System satellites pick up the heat signature — described tongue-in-cheek each year as Rudolph’s nose — and relay that data to the operations center at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs.

The same systems that track ballistic missile launches and foreign aircraft feed the Santa map millions of families follow each Christmas Eve. The website and app, NORADSanta.org, draw millions of visits worldwide, supported by partnerships with private-sector tech companies to handle the enormous data load.

For the troops and civilians who staff NORAD’s operations center, the holiday season looks different from most. The command never shuts down; watch officers, radar technicians, and support staff work through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day just as they do any other time of year.

While much of the focus turns to Santa tracking, the real work continues in the background — scanning radar feeds, monitoring satellite data, and staying ready to respond to any threat that might appear. Most of the roughly 1,500 people assigned to NORAD and U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Space Force Base and nearby Cheyenne Mountain take at least part of a holiday shift, trading hours so others can spend time with family.

The Santa operation does bring a welcome change of pace. Hundreds of volunteers — many of them military spouses, retirees, and local community members — come into the command center each year to answer calls and messages from children worldwide. The phone lines open on Christmas Eve, and volunteers work in shifts to handle thousands of questions about Santa’s location.

“It’s a special tradition that brings a little normalcy to our operations,” said one senior officer who has participated for several years. “Even as we maintain our vigilance, we get to be part of something that brings joy to millions of children.”

The command center looks different that night: screens glow with maps of the sleigh’s route, phones ring constantly, and there are cookies and coffee between workstations. For a few hours, a command built for high-stakes warning and response turns into a small slice of holiday normalcy, even as the mission carries on.

The Santa Tracker has also become a presidential tradition, with commanders-in-chief from different administrations participating in the annual phone calls. Both former Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have taken calls from children eager to know Santa’s whereabouts, continuing a White House tradition that spans multiple administrations.

NORAD’s dual mission was recently dramatized in the Netflix film “A House of Dynamite,” which portrayed how the command center responds to potential threats. While the Missile Defense Agency pushed back on the film’s portrayal of interceptor capabilities — noting that U.S. missile defense systems have “displayed a 100% accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade” — the movie highlighted the critical nature of NORAD’s everyday mission.

As December 24th approaches, NORAD’s yearly transformation reminds Americans of the vigilance that continues year-round. On the floor where the phones are answered and the consoles stay lit, the message remains simple: someone always has the watch — even on Christmas Eve.