15. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
From the beginning of the Manhattan Project, British and Canadian scientists, engineers, technicians, and military personnel were involved with the effort to develop, produce, and deploy the atomic bomb and its subsequent iterations. Since the route Soviet missiles and bombers would take during an all-out nuclear attack against the United States would in large part be over the Arctic, the early warning system required the United States to detect a Soviet incursion over Canadian air space and to respond to one in time. NORAD divided North America into three distinct regions, the Alaskan Region, under the auspices of the US Eleventh Air Force; the Canadian Region, the defense of which comes under the command of the First Canadian Air Division; and the Continental US region, under 1st Air Force. There are smaller divisions within the major commands, including Canada being divided into eastern and western regions.
NORAD was born in 1957, and the following year the Americans and Canadians agreed that command of NORAD would always be held by an American officer, with the Vice-Commander being a Canadian. The nations agreed that NORAD’s primary responsibility would be the defense of the North American continent by providing early warning and defense for the retaliatory forces of the Strategic Air Command. For the first decade of its existence, Canada and the United States worked closely together to create seamless communications. NORAD has been reorganized several times, but for six decades Canadian-American cooperation and shared responsibilities and expense have maintained a vigilant protective curtain over the North American continent. As a whimsical note, every year since its inception NORAD has continued the tradition of its predecessor by tracking and reporting the progress of Santa Claus as he makes his rounds on Christmas Eve.