Exercise Vigilant Eagle

Exercise Vigilant Eagle is a series of trilateral military exercises involving the armed forces of Canada, Russia, and the United States. The exercise is designed to prepare the Russian Air Force and the air forces of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to undertake coordinated air intercept missions against hijacked civilian aircraft. Four such exercises have been held.

Vigilant Eagle 2010
The first Vigilant Eagle exercise was planned for 2008 but postponed until 2010 due to the South Ossetia War. According to the U.S. government, that exercise marked "the first live-flying event between Russia and the United States since the Second World War."

Vigilant Eagle 2011
A second Exercise Vigilant Eagle was held in 2011. In the exercise scenario, a U.S. civilian airliner operating near the Russia-United States northern border was seized by terrorists and flown towards Russia. The scenario was then repeated in reverse, with an aircraft originating in Russian airspace violating NORAD's Alaskan Air Defense Sector where it was intercepted and "repelled from North American airspace."

The exercise tested the ability of the Federal Aviation Administration to contact both Russian Air Force and NORAD authorities and of NORAD and the Russian Air Force to effectively liaise with each other in tracking and intercepting the hijacked aircraft. The aircraft used to represent the U.S. airliner was a civilian-crewed passenger aircraft chartered from Global Aviation.



Vigilant Eagle 2012
Vigilant Eagle 2012 was a command post exercise (CPX) held in 2012 that, for the first time, did not include live flying aircraft, instead using computer simulations.

Vigilant Eagle 2013
Exercise Vigilant Eagle 2013 was conducted in August of 2013. The exercise again involved a live-flying element with CF-18s of the Royal Canadian Air Force intercepting a civilian airliner before handing-off the mission to the Russian Air Force as the aircraft passed over the international boundary.

Vigilant Eagle 2014
A planned Vigilant Eagle 2014 was suspended due to tensions between the United States and Canada on one side, and the Russian Federation on the other, over the War in Donbass.