Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Can Modern Air Defenses Stop Santa’s Stealth Sleigh?
By
Robert Farley
Published
8 hours ago
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2024/12/can-modern-air-defenses-stop-santas-stealth-sleigh/
Humanity’s long, bitter struggle against Santa Claus continues.
Over the last two years, the battle against the Arctic Holiday Elf has breached new technological frontiers, changing how we think about preventing chimney intrusions.
Santa poses for a picture in front of an F-35 Lightning II before visiting members of the 419th Fighter Wing Dec. 8, 2019 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The wing hosts the children’s Christmas party annually to provide an opportunity for reservists to reconnect after a busy year of multiple deployments around the globe. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Justin Fuchs)
The NORAD Santa Claus tracker continues to supply children the world over with data about Santa’s incursions into national air space.
But despite technological innovations, Santa remains an air defense threat. What have we done over the last two years to prevent Santa’s reign of holiday terror?
What Have the Last Two Years Showed Us?
Air defense has become the name of the game in terrestrial warfare, and the technologies and techniques developed in the Wars of Humanity have clear implications for the struggle against Claus. Advances in air defense technology have made efforts to deliver presents at close range without stealth nearly suicidal for elves and reindeer alike. Conventional aircraft and sleighs simply cannot operate without substantial risk in contested airspace.This has left Santa with some unappealing options. Glide bombs launched at stand-off ranges can reduce the danger to Santa’s sleigh, but are imprecise and often result in packages being delivered off target. Delivery of packages through long-range precision cruise missiles can solve part of the targeting problem, but at volume the expense is high and even the fastest cruise missiles can be shot down.
Historically, Santa has demonstrated reluctance to go ballistic, given the incapacity of most conventional roofs to receive a sleigh traveling at terminal velocity. Nevertheless, precision-targeted ballistic missile delivery of packages has increasingly become an attractive option for Santa.
However, advances in ballistic missile defense technology mean that even the most lethal delivery systems have only a slim chance of arriving at their targets successfully. Volume helps, of course, and one of Santa’s long-honed strategies of package delivery has been to saturate an air defense system on a single night. However, this still leaves many packages undelivered or delivered to the wrong address.
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Santa poses for a picture in front of an F-35 Lightning II before visiting members of the 419th Fighter Wing Dec. 8, 2019 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The wing hosts the children’s Christmas party annually to provide an opportunity for reservists to reconnect after a busy year of multiple deployments around the globe. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Justin Fuchs)
However, there is little room for triumphalism. As Santa has access to advanced stealth technology, he remains a direct threat to conventional air defense networks and to the targets that they protect. Indeed, a properly employed stealth sleigh can blind and defeat an entire air defense system, opening an entire country open to the delivery of holiday packages. Combined with drones and long-range precision munitions, a holiday campaign of terror spearheaded by stealth reindeer can still defeat the best efforts of even a well-constructed air defense network.
Santa and the Drone Revolution
In response to these trends Santa has mightily expanded his use of delivery drones. Guided and carefully programmed drones can, at manageable expense, deliver packages with precision to targets across a country. The best available evidence indicates that Santa has developed a system of drone-control centers below the Arctic ice, manned by specially trained elves and capable of coordinating a multifaceted holiday offensive against a wide array of targets.Moreover, autonomous and semi-autonomous drones can deliver packages without direct control, avoiding concerns about electronic interference. Drone campaigns are particularly well-suited to the North Pole’s air penetration strategy because of close linkages between Santa’s defense industrial base and his toymaking industries, taking advantage of dual use technologies that have both military and civilian application.
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But drones aren’t the end of the story. Most of the North Pole’s drones travel at speeds and on flight paths that are subject to interception from conventional air defense systems. As with missiles, volume can help by overwhelming defensive capabilities, but this leaves many packages undelivered. Moreover, the development of counter-drone drones have helped to even the holiday aerial battlefield.
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