 And there it is to wrap a peaceful song. Not so long ago, word got out that there was a brand new world that had just about everything a person would need. A world that guaranteed full freedom. They made up their minds then and there to sacrifice everything for the day when their descendants, you and I, would be able to live in the manner that they had been denied. We were labored so that we could be independent and teach others the meaning of independence. And eventually there were 13 sisters by the sea who built their home and called it liberty. It was one of their sons who proclaimed, That government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Today there are 50 sisters, each as beautiful as the other. A young country called to early greatness, yet well aware that greatness is born to be challenged. All of us in NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, are deeply conscious of our responsibilities for the defense of the United States and Canada. We know that the better our aerospace defenses, the more NORAD contributes to the deterrence of all-out war, and if deterrence should fail, the better NORAD could ensure the survival of all of us. The threat against us is changing in scope and degree. Our aerospace defense capability must therefore change continuously to successfully counter the threat. Every challenge sets the pace. We can't be content in second place. There's the challenge to extend our defenses in aerospace. The challenge for speed. Supersonic speed. The challenge for altitude. For firepower. And the challenge for weapons that can deliver this firepower to the target. Should an aggressor decide to make us a target? We're doing what must be done, not to show our strength. No, we know our strength. We want the aggressor to know it too. When a strong man armed to keep of his house, he is in peace. Defense is an ancient art, the key to survival. Its story is old and has been told and retold in many ways. When the Sue City Air Defense Sector commissioned Oscar Howe, a full-blooded Sue Indian and Professor of Art to design an appropriate emblem, he told the story in the symbolic language of his ancestors. He combined the peace pipe and the tomahawk to symbolize peace and the power to prevail in armed conflict. Eagle feathers for the land, earth and sky. Flashes of lightning to signify the speed requirement to react if a warring tribe attacked. Professor Howe has tied in the past with the book. The story is the same, only that the old has made way for the new. Far to the west in a pine forest near the sea, where once stood an Indian encampment, the time has long since erased. The tribal ceremonies have changed. The TPs of the Braves and Tribal Council have been replaced by those that better serve the times. Where scouting parties once searched the nearby woods to determine the enemies whereabouts, we now rely upon the eagle eye of electronic scouts. Greater our power to detect. The greater our chances to protect. We stand in readiness and yet we cannot dismiss the existing threat. What do you think we're doing here? Surveillance. Maintenance. And how about us? Security. And me. Communication. And me. Emergency. It takes infinite patience despite the claim that defense cannot be a waiting game. It takes experience. The actual performance of tactics we've learned is the only teacher where defense is concerned. To be combat ready in case we're attacked, we must know what we're doing and how to react. So we picked the toughest, most professional opposition we could possibly find, the hard-hitting target force of our own air defense command. These men were assigned to simulate every tactic and evasion action that's known. Then, flight and intercept missions were flown. The friendly enemy. Friends versus friends. While one invades, the other invents. In preserving our peace, we have learned from the past. Without a defense, things can happen too fast. Without an organized program and the men to administer it, just one mistake would be the last. It's the same performance with a different cast. The battle staff as it is known today includes the intelligence officer. Formerly known as the medicine man. The communications electronics officer. Chief Thunderbolt. The weather officer. Chief Rain in the face. Ground environment officer. Chief Prairie Guard. The commander. Mindy Council Chief. The deputy for operations. Chief Battle Pride. The fighter interceptor officer. Chief War Eagle. The fighter officer missiles. Chief Flying Force. The air defense artillery officer. Chief Flaming Arrow. Each man a specialist. But it takes many specialists to accomplish ADC's foresighted mission. Specialists to support the vast network of radar coverage. To effect function number one. Detect. Others to catalog and keep track of known air traffic and perform function number two. Identify. And should identification be questionable? Intercept. And those men who in case of a hostile visitor must execute the final command. Destroy. Nor are we alone in our strength. There are more where we came from. For we are the strength of fifty glorious states and Canada. Because we all agreed that what we need is what our forefathers set forth in their historic creed. Liberty and justice for all. And so we joined hands and built a wall of sentinel eyes and ears extending from our borders to the wide frontiers of outer space. In the desert. On tops of mountains. Under mountains. On the ocean. Over the ocean. Across the Arctic. Blanketing the continent from east to west. And man must live with that which he has created. Keeping his lonely vigil along far flung frontiers. Known with his thoughts. Thoughts not of himself but of others. Thoughts of getting the job done. Thoughts of maintaining readiness. Sleep. Eat. We travel on a summit. So said Napoleon. And when you consider that the pilots and crews of the United States Air Force are the most traveled men in history. Why shouldn't they be the best fed? The cooks who prepare the in-flight meals know the type of food that best appeals to the men on air-observated flights. The states and endless nights. Four hundred miles south to north. The same old course. Back and forth. But then comes a break in the routine run. The in-flight meal is finally done. It is easy to see that it is not the black box but the aluminum box that is their secret weapon. It comes to defense. Man will find the means. And so he created a new world of machines. Machines that can talk. Memory machines. Machines that operate other machines. Machines that compute and tabulate. Machines that measure and calculate. Machines that collect and communicate the data gathered by other machines to ADC's master machine, which instantly displays it at the combat operations center on a giant screen, keeping NORAD alert to the overall sea. The COC, Heart of the North American Air Defense Command, where our Army, Navy, and Air Force join hands with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the common cause of aerospace defense. Here the commanders busily contemplate the future. From Kinney Hawk to Cape Canaveral has been a little over 50 years. The next 50 years will make even these accomplishments seem insignificant by comparison. Just around the corner lies the most challenging era of all time. The exploration of space and eventually interplanetary travel. Man's effort to learn more about our universe will bring men closer together. That space will be explored only for peaceful purposes. But the same time we realize that to preserve freedom on the earth, we must have the capability to counter any threat which any aggressor may pose in space. In anticipation of such a threat, man went to work and the problem was met. The human brain conceived and created a space detection and tracking system. An electronic aid through which all man-made objects in space may be tracked and displayed. Numerous tracking stations form a network. Maniana land could well be the title of this desert scene. Maniana for tomorrow, which in our language means the future. The commander of a sensor site hosts down rather a unique job. Our man could be turned an aerospace yard master. You see he knows the roots of the numerous objects that are orbiting the earth. He can check his timetable and down to the last millisecond tell you whether any of the known space traffic is on schedule, late, or has been sidetracked. Space-age yard masters such as he may be found in sensor sites throughout the free world in all sorts of places such as this South Atlantic island. What about the ballistic missile? Is the missile a space threat too? Located beyond this peaceful little village hidden away in the desolate moors of England, manned by our allies and extending from here across the western hemisphere to the Alaskan edge of the Arctic frontier and joined by this keystone in the ice-locked glacier fields of Greenland are three great ballistic missile early warning sites shooting their beams 3,000 miles into space, looking for hostile missiles. Silhouetted against the last horizon, a chain of strange structures looms separated yet invisibly linked to the all-seeing watchtowers of defense scanning, searching, probing, penetrating the cosmic reaches of outer space from the top of the world. A fantasy land of reality set within the science fiction atmosphere of what could be another planet. Transmitter platforms, klystron towers and waveguides stretch out overhead transmitting the driving energy that is generated through huge arteries pulsing the life-giving plasma of radar frequency to the nerve center of a man-made monster that has long since dwarfed its creator, yet serves him faithfully. Not unlike a giant pipe organ through which Sergei Concerto sensitized cords cords broken into minute parts and concentrated to form a central sounding board capable of catching the rebound of movement from the boundless lanes of infinity and as it appears a vast population compounding countless trades and professions tends this early warning systems every need, living like moles in an underground domain of ice and snow manning its chain of battle stations, train technicians, technological specialists whose erudition far surpasses their youthful appearance, masters of mathematics, cosmic explorers on the alert sensitive to the heartbeat and pulse of their charge, the giant scanner reaching out to grab invisible missile warning signals from the highways of the universe behind this door is located the heart that pulses the flow of intelligence instantaneously to the brain of the system the NORAD Combat Operations Center Colorado Springs the core of our continent's aerospace defense attuned to any and all symptoms of unrest as relayed from every nerve in its system we have come a long way yet much lies ahead as we stand today we are somewhat in the same position as we were in the 15th century when the explorations of Marco Polo, Magellan and Columbus opened up new vistas of manned world when the mysteries of space began to yield to such men as Galileo sharpening man's awareness of the vast universe that lay beyond so exciting became the hopes of the future that the great scholar Erasmus in the closing years of his life expressed his reluctance to die with this vast new world opening up before him today man on the threshold of century 21 continues to delve into the laws of nature and is coming closer to solving the mysteries of the boundless universe and with the promise of this bright and enlightening era the importance of defending our hard-earned freedom has increased enormously these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certainly inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness three men must ensure that no nation will be denied its right on earth through the domination of space by another the president has said let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty this much we pledge and move