Where was the Fighter Defenses?

“Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday. ... As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up.”

                                                                                 — Anatoli Kornukov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force

There is a set of procedures for responding to hijackings that were in effect until Rumsfeld intentionally disabled and disrupted them.

These procedures (revamped in 1997) provided a clear way for the military to respond to an emergency such as a hijacking:

4.7.1. Immediate Response.

Requests for an immediate response (i.e., any form of immediate action taken by a DoD Component or military commander to save lives, prevent human suffering, or mitigate great property damage under imminently serious conditions) may be made to any Component or Command.  The DoD Components that receive verbal requests from civil authorities for support in an exigent emergency may initiate informal planning and, if required, immediately respond as authorized in DoD Directive 3025.1 (reference (g)).[i]

Under these regulations in place before Sept. 11, if air traffic controllers are unable to establish contact with an errant plane, otherwise known as non responsive (NOR), they are supposed to turn the case over to the North American air defense command (NORAD).  After being alerted, NORAD is expected to scramble fighter jets to intercept the “NOR” within a few minutes.  Such intercept orders were reportedly issued on 129 occasions in the year 2000, and on 67 occasions in the year 2001 prior to Sept. 11.[ii]

The FAA — NORAD blame game

In hearings and public statements, NORAD and the FAA have given what commission officials describe as incomplete and at times conflicting answers.  At a hearing last May, Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, commander of NORAD’s Continental United States Region, said the Pentagon agency — which is responsible for the nation’s air defenses — had gotten official notification from the FAA that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked at 9:24 a.m., 22 minutes after the second plane hit the World Trade towers.⁹⁷

This led to a NORAD request to scramble F-16 jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to attempt to intercept the aircraft — an order that came too late to prevent the Pentagon crash just a few minutes later. 
But commission officials said they recently discovered in the course of interviews with FAA staff that agency officials knew that Flight 77 was off course earlier than that and that there may have been “informal” notice to NORAD; there were even agency tapes of conversations to that effect.  However, these Commission claims were unfounded, as you will soon see.  Neither the radar data nor the conversations, show that there was a change of course in Flight 77.  The Flight was on course and in communication with controllers right up to the point it went “coast track” (Lost on radar).

F-16s on any day — other than 9/11 — would have been guarding the Capital (Photo: USAF).

Andrews AFB was AWOL.

Why didn’t the military scramble jets out of Andrews AFB, which is only 13 miles (couple of minutes) away from the Pentagon to protect the Washington D.C. area immediately after the second WTC crash at 9:03 am? 

Andrews AFB is only 13 miles away from the Pentagon

(Map: Expedia.com).

Scrambling aircraft simply means providing an Air Force escort to survey the situation.  This has nothing to do with shooting down an aircraft.  Such scrambling procedures occurred 67 times in the year prior to 9/11 (See Appendix on emergency procedures like the standard interception protocols).  If a commercial plane fails to respond to radio communications, military jets will intercept the plane.  The procedure from well before 9/11 are described by the FAA manual as follows:

“…[The intercepting military craft communicates by] Rocking wings from a position slightly above and ahead of, and normally to the left of, the intercepted aircraft…”  This action conveys the message: “You have been intercepted.”  The commercial jet is then supposed to respond by rocking its wings to indicate compliance, upon which the interceptor performs a “slow level turn, normally to the left, on to the desired heading [direction].”  The commercial plane then responds by following the escort.[iii]

The notion that this simple standard operating procedure (SOP) failed to occur is inconceivable — without a military stand down order.  Only a direct order from the top could have created a scenario to “not take action”.

Because of a June 2001 Amalgam Virgo exercise, the perpetrators had

a detailed account of the expected responses and their reaction times

(Image: NDIA).

The attackers would need to know how to disable a myriad of high-tech defenses (Image: NDIA).

Air Force scrambles for Payne Stewart’s Lear jet.

In the case of Payne Stewart, professional golf champion, the Air Force went up to check his fatal Lear jet flight on 25 October 1999.  It was routine.  Incidentally, Turning off a transponder is illegal, and with supposed phone calls as early as 8:21 a.m., from flight attendants.  This should have easily confirmed the hijacking of Flight 11 — a full 25 minutes before it collided with the WTC at 8:46 a.m.  There was plenty of time to intercept Flight 11 far from New York City.

Soon spin-doctors were touting the “talking points”.

Efforts were made to deceive the public that our military had made a vain attempt, but the box cutter-yielding terrorists just out smarted our elaborate state-of-the-art defenses.  General Weaver said “The [F-15] pilots flew ‘like a scalded ape,’ topping 500 mph, but were unable to catch up to the airliner.”[iv]  But he didn’t tell you that the top speed of a F-15 is over 1900 mph!!!