Well, NORAD, according to their website stands for "The North American Aerospace Defense Command." I'm assuming that they went with the first syllables of the words "North Radar" because NAADC didn't make a very good acronym.

EPRAD, it seems, doesn't actually exist. The only real hits I get for it point to websites on these odd domains. lcfanfic.com and nfanfic.net, for the most part. Who knows what that's about. wink

(There's also a company which manufactures electronics for movie studios, which may indicate that it was an in-joke or just a convinient cool-sounding thing that they decided to use. In any case, EPRAD\'s commercial homepage doesn't give any indication of where they got their name...)

I'd suggest that EPRAD was the European counterpart of NORAD, but as I recall, it was located in the US. So... Eastern Pacific Radio Astronomy Department? Earth Planetary Radar Defense? ExtraPlanetary RadioAstronomy Defence? Mix and match. Take your pick. Or maybe, like NORAD, it's just a convenient word that doesn't really mean anything. <shrug>

Paul

When in doubt, think about penguins. It probably won't help, but at least it'll be fun.