Original subtitles

- Hey, I'm Matthew Burchette.

And this my friends is behind the wings.

And I think we're in trouble.

- [Narrator] This program was made possible

by Wings Over The Rockies.

Educating and inspiring people of all ages

about aviation and space endeavors

of the past, present and future.

(upbeat music)

This program made possible by...

- [Woman] Little learners can read, write, talk, sing

and play at Arapahoe Libraries.

Make a playdate, join a story time, build a masterpiece

and present a puppet show all in one morning.

More at arapahoelibraries.org.

- [Narrator] This episode made possible by...

- [Woman] Do Denver's 300 days of sunshine

make the smiles a little wider?

They definitely make the energy here stronger

so your family can enjoy every unexpected encounter

and outdoor adventure.

Denver. Soak it all in.

(upbeat music)

- [Matthew] Now I say this a lot, but how cool is this?

(helicopter blades whirring)

This is Lieutenant Zach Farrell.

Lieutenant General Christopher Coates.

The amazing Gene Kranz.

You've never seen aerospace like this.

(plane whooshes by)

Hi, welcome back to Wings Over The Rockies,

my favorite place in the world.

You are gonna totally dig this episode

because it's on NORAD.

Now, what is NORAD?

Well, we're gonna 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 kinda sat back here

sheltered from the rest 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 V-2 Rocket.

The Amerikabomber.

What was the best way to defend yourself in the late 1940's?

Radar.

We got with Canada and we started to develop

a system that they called the DEW Line.

And it was actually three sets of radar.

There was the DEW Line,

which was the Distant Early Warning Line,

The Pinetree 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 inner continental 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're gonna discover today.

(upbeat music)

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 it's headquarters at ENT Air Force Base

in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Following construction of an underground facility

at Cheyenne Mountain in the 1960's,

NORAD's Command post moved under the mountain

to monitor the air space over Canada and the United States.

In 2008, NORAD moved it's day to day operations

to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs

and redesignated Cheyenne Mountain as an Air Force Station

and the back up command center.

- [Man] Proceed and identify.

- [Pilot] Okay Control.

I have an identification.

You won't believe it, it's you-know-who.

- [Matthew] Aside from assessing daily aerospace threats,

NORAD is also responsible for tracking Santa

with their NORAD Track Santa program.

- And so we use NORAD standard equipment to track Santa.

The stuff that we use to protect

and defend North America every day of the year.

- [Matthew] 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,

Lt. Gen. 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

or the defense of the homeland.

What we've seen over the last year or two,

and it's reflected both in the Canadian Defense Policy,

Strong, Secure, Engaged,

and the US National Defense Strategy is that our nations,

our homeland is no longer a sanctuary.

And we've 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 at sea holding our space assets at risk,

operating in the cyber domain and the information domain.

And then NORAD in 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.

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 gonna catch on

is that I said NORAD is here at Peterson.

Most people think Cheyenne Mountain.

They've seen Stargate SG-1,

and 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 Tyndall Air Force Base

and we even have people in Greenland

at the Thule Air Base in Greenland

so NORAD's bigger than just where the headquarters--

- Just one location, yeah. - happens to be,

but you're right.

For a long time,

NORAD headquarters and our operations center

was inside Cheyenne Mountain.

After the events of 9/11,

the role of NORAD expanded slightly

to include the air defense of our internal air

at the same time.

It would seem to be more effective at the time

to move the operation center out of Cheyenne Mountain,

the principle operation 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.

At the level that I get to see things interplayed

it's the strategic mixed in 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

in what you call N2C2,

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 have enjoyed speaking with you,

I wanna see how far I can get without being tackled.

So sir, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- And if need be, can you get me out of the brig?

- We'll try.

- Okay, thank you.

(upbeat music)

- What does N2C2 actually stand for?

- So N2C2 stands for the NORAD and US Northcom

current operations center.

And what we do here is essentially

All Domain Situational Awareness

and threat characterizations.

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-- - Makes sense.

- Normally we work at 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.

- [Matthew] Okay.

- 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 is my U.S. Air Force counterpart,

my U.S. Air Force brother.

Our Deputy Command Center Director,

who happens to be a Canadian today,

left-handed Colonel Jody Hanson.

We also have our enlisted controllers

that help us deal with

conferencing, managing the knowledge wall

and 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 there

for defense of North American airspace like Russian bombers,

or Operation Noble Eagle,

and we'll talk a bit more about that in a minute.

We've got meteorology.

We've got a Federal 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 what I mentioned earlier,

All Domain Situational Awareness.

We want to know what's going on.

Anything that could be a security threat

to North America 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

- So speaking of aircraft flying around,

on of the terms I've heard a lot is Noble Eagle.

- Right.

- What exactly is that?

- Operation Nobel Eagle is an operation

that's been in place since 9/11

where NORAD has a role of defending North America

from any aerospace threat like,

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 region will give us a call

and say, hey, there's something weird going on.

We may have a conversation about it or they may just say,

hey, we're scrambling fighters, we're reacting to this.

And then we'll do what we call

ringing out an Operation Nobel 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 NOTAM's?

Just not paying attention, not talking to the tower?

- I would probably say 99 1/2 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 Superbowl in Atlanta.

People that normally fly around Atlanta aren't necessarily

used to suddenly having more airspace restrictions.

So if they're not reading the NOTAM's,

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

when you're gonna run an exercise.

And we would love to be a part of that and 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.

- All right, let's go.

(upbeat music)

This is actually gonna be an exercise

where a small civilian aircraft is unresponsive

and they're in restricted airspace.

- So this scenario is restricted airspace

in the area of Denver.

A Beechcraft Baron squawks 7500, which is a hijack code,

- Oh. - and is unresponsive.

And we're going through the steps right now, so.

- (radio traffic covered by conversation)

- [Announcer] Based on track location and heading,

we're going to request military assistance at this time.

- So, if you look up on the screen

they've highlighted the track.

It's flying, the red circle is showing

the temporary flight restricted area.

- All right, CONR's tracking.

EAC's please ring out and exercise ONEC long pull.

- [Soldier] Copy that.

Exercise ONEC. Stand by. Exercise ONEC!

- So an Operation Nobel Eagle Conference

is the means that we use to share information

between all the involved security agents.

- So that's ONEC.

- Right, so that's what ONEC stands for.

They'll ring out all of the different stations.

So the Department of Homeland Security,

it's the Transportation Security Agency,

all of those types of FAA, FBI whoever that are involved.

If anybody has the information they can pass it

and it will help with decision making.

What the CCD has done as he just labeled it

as a target of interest.

Which now means that we've officially kicked off

Operation Nobel Eagle.

Okay so the controllers at the sectors

are controlling the fighters.

So they're talking to the fighters saying,

Okay, so 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 in the vast majority of 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 plan or they're on a standard arrival,

they've got 150 passengers in the back

but they're not talking to the right people.

We start to get a little bit-- - A little bit nervous

- Like, we're expecting he's gonna probably,

he's gonna roll out onto his frequency

expecting to talk to tower and he's not,

realized he's on the wrong frequency

and then everybody kinda switches over

and then we breathe a sigh of relief, right?

- (chuckles)

- But we're always ready to react

because we never know, right? - Yeah.

- 9/11 showed that.

We have to be ready to react at any time.

- At any time.

- But what we'll do is,

depending on the speed of the target,

if the F-16's,

they'll do an identification say,

okay in this case, it's a Beech Baron,

here's what I see in the cockpit.

You know, the guy's slumped over the controls,

or I see a bad looking dude with a gun

or whatever the scenario happens to be.

We're a minute away.

Now we're prepared to see

what the fighters are gonna tell us

to help build situational awareness.

Is this really a bad guy?

What's going on?

- [Man] TSOC for the exercise.

With the information that was provided in the aircraft

originally planning to squawk 7700

for an emergency with smoke in the cockpit,

we would like him to divert to Fort Morgan

Municipal Airport to the east.

So, the fighters intercepted, got his attention.

He realized he squawked the wrong code,

back talking to air traffic control now

so he's in contact, compliant.

And we've kind of done our part of it

and then the FAA will deal with...

Making sure he gets safely on the ground

and diverting him and that kinda thing.

- So at this point will the 16's 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.

(upbeat music)

- [Matthew] All right, the training exercise is complete.

But you know what's cooler

than seeing an intercept from inside N2C2?

Seeing it from the skies!

Get ready, because I'm heading up

with pilot Allen Wimmer to experience an intercept

by an F-16 from the cockpit

of this Cessna 182.

- [Matthew ] Yeah, great day to fly.

- [Allen ] Oh, beautiful.

- So we're flying with Allen Wimmer today

and Allen flew F-16's for the Air Force

but tell us what you're doing now?

- So I retired 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 at headquarters NORAD,

North American Aerospace Defense Command,

that's what your episode is about,

and one of the duties that I perform there

is to be a part of the what we call the Baron Team,

as in Red Baron.

- Oh yeah! Okay.

- We go out and play the role of a bad guy,

- (laughing)

- to try and train our air defense units,

as well as periodically do evaluations of their performance.

- [Matthew] So who are we gonna 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 temporarily restricted air space

that we're not allowed to go into.

- [Matthew] Right.

- [Allen \} And for some reason,

that has been declared as such.

Typically that will be associated

with a national special security event.

- Okay.

- Those are assessed and declared

by the Department of Homeland Security.

And if they need air defense, NORAD will provide that.

- Okay.

So, at this point I probably should break in and say

it's always good to read your NOTAM's.

- Absolutely. - (laughing)

- Those temporary flight restrictions will always be posted

in the NOTAM's.

- Let's just ahead and make the FAA happy

and say, - Absolutely.

- pilots, please read your NOTAM's.

- [Allen] Accidents happen.

Humans are what they are. - [Matthew \} Yes.

- So our aerospace warning mission

is to detect anybody that's coming along.

And then our aerospace control mission,

as it would apply in this scenario today is,

that person stumbling into the air space.

Now we need to figure out what's going on.

Is this just an accident?

Is this someone who might have mal intent?

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,

- Right. - 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.

Yo... I need help.

- Yeah.

- And they're happy to have it.

We'll train to a student pilot who's lost.

I don't know where I'm at and 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 elicit or illegal and not compliant.

Then we'll train to the person who literally has mal intent.

- [Matthew] 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.

- [Allen] I don't think they're aware either.

But with the small aircraft, it's just not something

that you see or hear about very often.

- No.

So in general,

are they gonna be kind of at our 10 or 11?

- Well you're not gonna see 'em, by intent,

until they want you to.

So in general, they're gonna approach from behind.

Most civilians are cruising along looking out

the front or the side.

Most of them aren't checking six.

- [Matthew] Doing the scan. - [Allen] Right?

And so they're gonna approach from our left side.

And the first time they approach us

will most likely be to take a look at us.

Read a tail number.

Verify who we are and relay that down

into 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 the tail number.

Immediately, DHS is on that conference

as you saw the Operation Nobel Eagle Conference

from the command center.

DHS will be on there.

As soon as someone 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 pilot'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 that data.

- [F-16 Pilot] Baron 261, we are ready in the east

and we are weapons safe.

- Copy weapons safe.

Baron is ready in the west.

- That's what I wanna hear.

- Lights on.

Okay here we go.

We're playing out the scenario now.

- Okay, here we go.

- [F-16 Pilot] Attention on guard,

this is Peak six zero armed air defense fighter.

- There's your call.

- [F-16 Pilot] Aircraft southeast of La Junta,

9000 track zero four one,

20 nautical miles south of La Junta.

You're approaching restricted airspace.

You're ordered to turn left or north immediately.

Contact ATC on one two three dot one.

If you do not comply, you may be fired upon.

- 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.

- Okay, so they're gonna have to take

some additional measures to number one,

let us know they're here

and 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 to comply.

- [Allen \} Here he comes, up our left side.

Again normally I wouldn't looking behind me

as a civilian.

- [Mathew] Yeah, he's rockin'.

- [Allen] He's rockin' his wings

and he's telling us he wants us to follow him right now.

- Wow!

How cool is that?

I gotta say that I saw him rockin' his wings

- You did.

- But I was more impressed with the fact that

there was an F-16 that close. (laughing)

so I could kinda see where somebody would go...

- [F-16 Pilot] 20 nautical miles southeast

- 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.

- [Matthew] Like oh by the way, hey buddy.

- So we're gonna let this go a little further here.

I'm not up on that frequency yet

and I'm playing out the role of the conversation we just had

where that's pretty cool.

I've never seen that but, wish I had my camera out.

- (laughing)

- And lets see how they handle it.

So this will be what we call a head-butt,

which is an escalatory maneuver which is,

at this point he's probably attempted to guide us away.

- Right.

- We have not complied.

Now he's gonna go across our nose,

which is generating a traffic conflict

to make the point to us there's a problem here.

You need to follow me right now.

- Yeah.

- Coming up the left side.

So he's rocking his wings saying you need to follow me now.

- [Matthew] That is really cool.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

- [Allen] He's going across our nose,

- [Matthew] Uh oh!

- [Allen] he's dispensing flares.

- [Matthew] He's popping flares, we're in trouble now.

- [Allen] That is the signal that we're in serious trouble.

We are gonna follow this guy before he decides he needs

to escalate--

- [Matthew] Yeah, that's not good.

While it's cool to see an F-16, that probably means

we're doing something wrong.

- Means we have done something wrong

to make him rejoin on us.

And so we're gonna 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 NOTAM's people!

Allen, thank you so much!

- Our pleasure.

- That's have been a great, great flight.

And thank you to the men and women of NORAD

keeping us safe 24/7, 365.

Great job.

And Buckley and the 120th.

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.

(upbeat music)

- [Matthew] 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 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 F-16 intercept,

we've taken you behind the wings

of North American Aerospace Defense Command.

(chuckles) (beeping)

- Who was, (speaks gibberish).

(beeping)

- You're not the only guy in this building

with hair that long by the way.

- Oh really. (laughing)

(beeping)

You're also a natural on camera, you wanna join the team?

(laughs)

- I'll do whatever you need me to do.

(laughing)

(upbeat music)

- [Woman] Little learners can read, write, talk, sing

and play at Arapahoe Libraries.

Make a playdate.

Join a story time.

Build a masterpiece and present a puppet show

all in one morning.

More at arapahoelibraries.org.

- [Woman] 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.