US anti-missile alert to stop Santa slipping under radar

The full force of George "Dubya" Bush's anti-missile defences will be trained on tracking a new red menace this week – Santa Claus.

Norad – the early warning system designed to protect North America against attack – will pick up the foreign intruder and his reindeer as they take off from the North Pole, and then track them around the world by homing in on Rudolph's red nose.

"We monitor any kind of airborne threat that could come towards us," Major Douglas Martin, at Norad's headquarters in Colorado, told The Independent on Sunday. "The important thing is that we make a positive identification because we do not want to have anyone mimicking Santa's capabilities."

The infrared sensors on its geostationary satellites will track the heat from Rudolph's nose as the sleigh passes over America and down to the South Pacific, where Christmas night begins.

Norad will publish the results of its tracking – with photographs from the Statue of Liberty to Stonehenge – on its website. It expects more than 100 million people to log in.

www.norad.mil