NORAD: Terrorist Attacks Simulated For Training Exercise At Super Bowl

Canadian jets muster to protect Super Bowl
Part of norad duties Terrorist attacks simulated for training exercise

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/s...7-f16a7dca1bf6

National Post
By Melissa Leong
January 26, 2006

While Windsor, Ont., residents slept early this morning, U.S. and Canadian fighter jets were scheduled to be roaring overhead, running exercises simulating a terrorist attack on next month's Super Bowl XL.

The exercise, launched by the joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defence Command, involved about a dozen aircraft and was held in the Windsor-Detroit area in preparation for the football game, which will be held on Feb. 5 at Detroit's Ford Field.

A CH-146 Griffon helicopter out of Kingston, Ont., simulated low-altitude scenarios while a C-21 Learjet acted as a "target" -- perhaps a hijacked plane -- violating airspace.

"This is air space that is restricted. People can't fly in there. If they do, then they might find themselves escorted out," Major Darren Steele, a spokesman for NORAD, said yesterday.

"If there is an aircraft or a blip that's not on our file flight plan, they can send the aircraft to intercept and identify it."

Fighter jets out of Bagotville, Que., Cessna aircrafts, H-65 helicopters, air refuelling tankers and an E-3 Airborne Early Warning and Control System aircraft for command and control support were also scheduled to take to the skies today.

"[We] run through some scenarios. A lot of this stuff helps us iron out any communication bugs," the Winnipeg native said from NORAD headquarters in Colorado.

Maj. Steele declined to go into further detail about the exercises for security reasons. "[Potential attackers] could think: 'If they're guarding against this, we'll do something else,' " he said.

"The scenarios are designed to exercise all of our aspects of co-ordination and communication. In the scenarios, you try to make it much harder than what we're probably going to face in real life."

He said yesterday that he hoped the early-morning training missions would not disturb any slumbering residents, explaining that they were scheduled for a time that would be least disruptive to commercial traffic.

Several agencies will be co-ordinating security measures during the Super Bowl including the RCMP, Transport Canada, Nav Canada and the FBI. Aircraft will patrol the airspace the day of the event.

"With all the different agencies working, folks can go watch the game and not worry ... because there's going to be a lot of people working very hard to make sure the event is safe," Maj. Steele said.

He said NORAD runs many security exercises annually.

"NORAD flies a number of missions [for] things like the Super Bowl, the G8 Summit in Canada, and down in the States, when they have the State of the Union address, and when we have dignarities flying around the country."

The exercises started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Authorities said NORAD fighters have scrambled or diverted from air patrols over the United States and Canada more than 2,000 times to respond to possible air threats since the air attacks on New York and Washington. Both Canada and the United States share the bill for all exercises.