Just for clarity - second quote is **Voyager’s{/b], not Desmostylus
:smack: %$*~! coding!!!
Well, I’m certainly reassured.
This quote somehow got left out of my previous post.
Are the hamsters back?
No, it’s more complicated than that. The “reference d” document I referred to above mandates prior approval for potentially lethal force.
Actual use of lethal force is not permitted at all:
I note that that that document is dated for June of 2001 - have they changed the language about use of lethal force since then? If I recall, it was authorized on 9/11/01 even if it was not used by the air force. I mean really, how else are you going to stop a 7x7 if the hijackers aren’t being cooperative?
Mind you, I’m quite happy that the use of force in these situations is limited, requires authoritization, etc. - no way do I want a bunch of hair-triggers cruising the skies. I don’t want to see a civilian plane shot down, but neither do I want to see something like the WTC destruction again. Use of lethal force is very, very much a course of last resort.
Then again, shooting down a plane isn’t, strictly speaking, an “apprehension” of hijackers.
I really don’t know the answer to that question.
Bush said that he did authorize it, but I’m inclined to disbelieve stuff that Bush says about 9/11. Not much of what Bush says about 9/11 fits with any of the independently verifiable facts.
Of course it’s not apprehension. It’s “use of military aircraft (fixed-wing or helicopter) or other vehicles as platforms for gunfire or the use of other weapons against suspected hijackers”.
BTW, I don’t see anything necessarily sinister in the two directives. Most of the Air Force scrambles prior to 9/11 were directed toward drug flights from central and south America. The directives make it clear that the Air Force is not allowed to shoot them down, regardless of any BS hijacking justification. It’s just too bad that real hijackings didn’t enter into the thinking.
As a civilian pilot, I find reassuring to read those two directives on a certain level - I’ve got enough to worry about aloft without dealing with F-16’s loaded for bear.
I think “real hijackings” didn’t enter into the thinking behind those directives because, until 9/11, death and destruction was not an objective of hijackers. So the situation could be handled without resorting to guns and missles, the main concerns being keeping the Bad Guys calm and making sure nothing interfered with them on their way to wherever they wanted to go. And no, we don’t want to start gunning down single-engine Cessnas and Pipers along Mexican border willy-nilly - the chances of mistaken identity (drug-runner vs. innocent civilian out for sight-seeing flight) are just too high. NOW we have a different problem - hijackers with a death wish using aircraft as weapons rather than transportation. Very different problem. I’m sure someone is working on potential solutions.
Apparently the general public doesn’t have access to either of those pages. Which makes it totally unhelpful. Tell me, did you just take these off Google, or did you even bother to look at them?
I appear to have been misinformed.
I will be leaving for Casablanca tomorrow, to take the waters.
In point of fact, as I recall, i was running out the door, and took for true the cites as proffered.
my bad.