General Gregory Guillot’s reassurances came as the joint US-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) reported that Santa and his reindeer were making stops in Russia and Iran after visiting countries further east including Japan, North Korea and Indonesia.
As of 0100 GMT on Christmas Day, Santa was making his way north across Brazil, headed towards Guyana, according to the tracker.
Santa’s journey this year comes after weeks of mysterious sightings of alleged drones in the US state of New Jersey, sparking worldwide curiosity even as many of the reported incidents were debunked.
“Of course we are concerned about drones and anything else in the air,” NORAD commander Guillot told Fox News. “But I don’t foresee any difficulty at all with drones for Santa this year.”
NORAD’s Santa tracker dates to 1955, when a Colorado newspaper advertisement printed a phone number to connect children with Santa — but mistakenly directed them to the hotline for the joint military nerve center.
The director of operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, answered the phone and quickly realized the child calling had the wrong number.
“But (he) didn’t want to upset him. So he started talking to the young child and passed along information” on Santa’s location, Canadian Air Force Major-General William Radiff, NORAD’s current director of operations, told AFP on Tuesday.
“And then afterwards, he talked to the rest of the staff there and said, ‘please, we’re going to get phone calls today… Let’s start doing this.'”
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