Turquoise North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD /ˈnɔːræd/; French: Commandement de la Défense Aérospatiale de l'Amérique du Nord, CDAAN), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection for Canada and the continental United States.

ANR maintains the readiness to conduct a continuum of aerospace control missions, which include daily air sovereignty in peacetime, contingency and deterrence in time of tension, and active air defense against manned and unmanned air-breathing atmospheric vehicles in times of crisis.

Both 11 AF and the CAF provide active duty personnel to the ROCC to maintain continuous surveillance of Alaskan airspace.

Both Sector Operations Control Centers (SOCCs) are co-located at CFB North Bay, Ontario.

[11] Any aircraft that has not filed a flight plan may be directed to land and be inspected by RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency.

The primary weapons systems are the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle and General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft.

It plans, conducts, controls, coordinates and ensures air sovereignty and provides for the unilateral defense of the United States.

The US West ROCC (Western Air Defense Sector) control center is at McChord Field, Washington.

Two December 1958 plans submitted by NORAD had "average yearly expenditure of around five and one half billions", including "cost of the accelerated Nike Zeus program" and three Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) sites.

[16] Canada's NORAD bunker at CFB North Bay with a SAGE AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central computer was constructed from 1959 to 1963.

Each of the USAF's eight smaller AN/FSQ-8 Combat Control Central systems provided NORAD with data and could command the entire United States air defense.

[19] In December 1960, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) placed the Ent Air Force Base Space Detection and Tracking System (496L System with Philco 2000 Model 212 computer)[20] "under the operational control of CINCNORAD ",[21] during the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker excavation, and the joint SAC-NORAD exercise "Sky Shield II".

[23] President John F. Kennedy visited "NORAD headquarters" after the 5 June 1963 United States Air Force Academy graduation.

[28] On at least three occasions, NORAD systems failed, such as on 9 November 1979, when a technician in NORAD loaded a test tape, but failed to switch the system status to "test", causing a stream of constant false warnings to spread to two "continuity of government" bunkers as well as command posts worldwide.

[citation needed] Both command posts had recently begun receiving and processing direct reports from the various radar, satellite, and other missile attack detection systems, and those direct reports simply did not match the erroneous data received from NORAD.

After the September 11 attacks, the NORAD Air Warning Center's mission included the interior airspace of North America.

[35] The Cheyenne Mountain Realignment[36] was announced in July 2006, to consolidate NORAD's day-to-day operations at Peterson Air Force Base.

The NORAD command center located under Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado is a setting of the 1983 film WarGames and the television series Jeremiah and Stargate SG-1.

In season 25 episode 4 of the TV series South Park, NORAD is hacked into by Mr Mackey using late 1980s computer hardware.