The North American air defense identification zone (ADIZ) is an area around the territories of the United States and Canada comprising airspace over land or water in which the ready identification, location, and control of civil aircraft is required in the interest of national security. This ADIZ is jointly administered by the civilian air traffic control authorities and the militaries of both nations, under the auspices of the North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD. The FAA handles the requests of international aircraft and Transport Canada handles Canadian requests. Any aircraft flying in these zones without authorization may be identified as a threat and treated as an enemy aircraft, potentially leading to interception by fighter aircraft.
An aircraft entering an ADIZ is required to radio its planned course, destination, and any additional details about its trip through the ADIZ to a higher authority, typically an air traffic controller. The aircraft must also be equipped with a radar transponder.
Read more about Air Defense Identification Zone: History, United States, Canada, Guam, Washington D.C.
Famous quotes containing the words air, defense and/or zone:
“Soun is noght but air ybroken,
And every speche that is spoken,
Loud or privee, foul or fair,
In his substaunce is but air;
For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke,
Right so soun is air ybroke.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There was a continuous movement now, from Zone Five to Zone Four. And from Zone Four to Zone Three, and from us, up the pass. There was a lightness, a freshness, and an enquiry and a remaking and an inspiration where there had been only stagnation. And closed frontiers. For this is how we all see it now.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)