NORAD exercise planned here Thursday

NORAD exercise planned Thursday

NORAD conducts about 50 such exercises each year, with some being surprise and others, advance-notice.

STAFF REPORT

Don’t be alarmed if fighter jets guiding a commercial aircraft appear in the Northern Ohio skies Thursday afternoon.

It’s just a practice run.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command will conduct exercise flights above the Youngstown, Canton and Toledo areas. Aircraft from the Toledo-based Ohio National Guard’s 180th Fighter Wing will respond for the exercise, said Lt. Commander Gary Ross of the U.S. Navy.

“In order to be able to respond, we have to practice,” Ross said. “The bottom line is to ensure that we have the resources and capabilities to respond to an air threat.”

Ross said that threats run a wide spectrum, from wayward commercial aircraft that don’t know they are traveling in restricted airspace to the hijacked planes of Sept. 11, 2001.

“These types of flight exercises are necessary in order to train, evaluate and assess NORAD’s ability to respond,” he said.

NORAD, a binational command that includes fighter wings in Canada and the U.S., conducts about 50 such exercises each year, Ross said.

The command employs both surprise and advance-notice exercises for the fighter wings, Ross said. The Thursday event is advance- notice, he said.

NORAD fighters have responded to more than 3,300 potential air threats in North America since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a news release.

Ross cited recent incidents of unruly passengers on planes traveling from Portland and Atlanta as examples of situations NORAD will handle.

The fighters guide the planes to the ground, Ross said, and hand the matter off to law enforcement.

“Once it lands, it’s no longer our situation,” he said.

But Thursday is just a dry run.

“We just wanted to let you know as well as your audience ... not to be alarmed if they see a jet fighter escorting a general-aviation craft,” Ross said.