In 1957, during the frosty years of the Cold War, Ike and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker established the North American Air Defense Command in anticipation of defending the continent from Soviet long-range bombers — Sputnik was still a few months away — and NORAD went on alert.
Joe Biden was 14 years old at the time and Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre wouldn’t make his first run for Parliament for another eight years. But on Saturday afternoon, for the first time in NORAD’s 66 years, President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jointly authorized the long since renamed North American Aerospace Defense Command to shoot down something out of the sky.
And so fell on the Yukon tundra was an object, following by a day another object that smashed into the frozen waters off northern Alaska, both zapped by Air Force F-22s with AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles (which cost a couple of hundred of dollars a piece). But having waited 66 years for its first search and destroy mission, NORAD was back in the skies less than 24 hours later, shooting down Object No. 3 Sunday afternoon over Lake Huron, with another Sidewinder, this off an F-16.
