Norad tests hijacked jetliner response
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 | 11:35 AM ET
CBC News
Military personnel from Canada, the United States and Russia teamed up for the first time on Tuesday to test their response to a hijacked commercial jet over North American airspace.
A Russian Su-27 fighter jet flies alongside a civilian airplane playing the role of a hijacked airliner on Sunday. (Ted S. Warren/Associated Press) The exercise, set to wrap up on Tuesday, is designed to "harden" the international air system's defences against hijacking by co-ordinating efforts across oceans and borders.
The basic premise of the exercise — codenamed Vigilant Eagle — is that an air carrier on an international flight has been taken over by terrorists and will not respond to communication attempts. The simulation will focus on the handover of monitoring of the aircraft between the defence forces of the three nations.
"I think any time that we increase our co-operation and our co-ordination, we harden ourselves against further events," said Canadian Forces Col. Todd Balfe, the deputy commander of North American Aerospace Defence Command Alaska region and the senior Norad observer aboard the "hijacked" plane.
The exercise began Sunday when a flight left Anchorage, Alaska, and headed west over the Pacific. Representatives of all three armed forces were on board.
Shortly after takeoff, the Gulfstream's civilian pilots sent a digital distress code to civilian air traffic controllers in Alaska signaling it had been "hijacked."
'Watershed moment'
Civilian controllers notified Norad, which dispatched two F-22 Raptor fighter jets to shadow it and an E-3 Sentry airborne surveillance and control plane to track it.
When the Gulfstream entered Russian airspace over the Pacific, commanders in the E-3 handed over responsibility for the plane to their Russian counterparts on an A-50 Mainstay surveillance and control plane. Four Russian Su-27 fighters and one MiG-31 took turns shadowing the Gulfstream.
The orders will be reversed for the return trip, which is to end at some point on Tuesday.
Norad officials have lauded the historic nature of the exercise, which demanded a level of co-operation that was unthinkable during the Cold War standoff between the U.S. and its allies and the Soviet Union.
"It's a watershed moment," Balfe said.
"If I'd been told 20, 25 years ago I'd be sitting on a U.S.-registered airplane with a Russian colonel as my counterpart, going over through Russian airspace on this exercise, I'd have thought you were crazy."
While hijacking incidents are rare, they do happen. In late July, a man seized a plane full of 105 passengers at Moscow's airport. In April 2009, Jamaican troops stormed a hijacked Canadian plane carrying 159 passengers in Montego Bay.
"If … we make it harder for terrorists to do us harm, they'll choose either not to do us harm or will look for other, more difficult manners or other ways of approaching us," Balfe said.
With files from The Associated Press
