# NORAD had drills of jets as weapons **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 20, 2004, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009 "2004-04-20T11:56:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/41 "2004-04-22T06:44:05Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > And if they had of shot those planes down (something I find highly unlikely, given the standard government reaction time, the decision process by ANY politician to decide to shoot down a plane load of citizens OVER major metropolitian areas, the time it would take to arm and prep the fighters, etc), you’d now be complaining that Bush went off half cocked before really knowing the situation and was just reacting without thinking. And you know what? I’d be agreeing with you. And if one of those pilots would have made a mistake and taken out a plane that wasn’t in fact hijacked, or if they have of shot one down but it had of crashed into say Northern Virginia or elsewhere in New York, as is most likely to have happened if you’ve ever BEEN to Washington DC and the Pentagon or to New York, then your howls would be long and loud about how stupid Bush was, that he should have thought with his brain instead of his dick, that he should have taken the time to assess the situation, etc etc. > > -XT Well, Ace Face pretty much covered it, but - Poppycock. They didn’t _decide_ not to shoot down the planes, they _failed_ to. BIG, BIG difference. And of course they knew which planes were hijacked. The ones that made big fucking U-Turns and went the wrong way. Duh. If they made a judgment call not to shoot down a plane over a densely populated area, that would be fine. You know perfectly well that’s NOT how it happened. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/42 "2004-04-22T06:53:45Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > OK. I’m sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but…none of the scenarios run by the various agencies had _hijacked_ planes being used as missles. Clancy’s book didn’t either. All scenarios thought that the planes used would be obtained by some other means. So Norad tracking three hijackings still doesn’t indicate that these planes are now on suicide runs. For all they knew, Al-Queda could have been running a massive kidnapping for ransom, or some other stunt. I don’t think it is unreasonable for a civilian government to take longer than 36 minutes to decide whether or not to shoot down _civilian_ airliners, full of _American citizens_, over highly populated American soil. Even if that _were_ true, they couldn’t have at least sent fighters to intercept them while they were deciding? They _do_ have radios, you know. They don’t have to decide, and then say “O.K., you can now get the fighter jets off the ground.” ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/43 "2004-04-22T07:29:59Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Plus, what do you tell the pilots involved? “Take this intercept vector and intercept this target at ETA so-and-so and coordinates such-and-such. Establish radio communication and escort it to this airport. Give us a constant update on its status. Arm your weapons and prepare to fire if we give you a kill order.” None of this is out of the bounds of regular Air Force training and procedures. > [@silenus](#): > > “Go shoot down a civilian airliner” won’t cut it. If the pilot gets a kill order from his CO and fails to follow through, something is _seriously_ wrong with his training. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/44 "2004-04-22T08:09:11Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > “Take this intercept vector and intercept this target at ETA so-and-so and coordinates such-and-such. Establish radio communication and escort it to this airport. Give us a constant update on its status. Arm your weapons and prepare to fire if we give you a kill order.” None of this is out of the bounds of regular Air Force training and procedures. > If the pilot gets a kill order from his CO and fails to follow through, something is _seriously_ wrong with his training. Which is what the NORAD exercises were about! How to deal with this threat which was, according to the Administration, unimaginable. ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/45 "2004-04-22T08:21:33Z")
I brought up the idea that at least 2 of the planes SHOULD have been stopped and/or shot down in another thread a while back and was kicked in the ass for saying it. It’s good to see that many more people here seem to have regained their senses. Now why are Bush’s poll numbers not crashing? > [@](#): > > Keystone Kounter-Terror: > > Only George W. Bush could study a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US”, and then blithely assert that it “said nothing about an attack on America.” > > [http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6&pid=1372](http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6&pid=1372) ---
**Author:** ![censored](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/35a633/32.png) [@censored](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/censored)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/46 "2004-04-22T10:37:22Z")
Excuse me… Just to put in a base of logistical reality in the midst of all this partisanship; The decision was made to shoot down the airliners if possible. Bush dosen’t control the launching logistics of fighter aircraft, unfortunately. The pilot needs to be roused, get to the plane, arm the plane (it may already be armed), take off, and get there. I may be inaccurate with the details of getting the plane off the ground, but the bottom line is that it’s not instant. In addition, this is hindsight. It all seems so clear now - oh, it’s just the planes making big U-turns, and of course this isn’t a regular hijacking, they want to fly it into the towers! NORAD probably had scores of inaccurate reports coming in; they did what they could. Bush and Cheney can’t control how fast the planes get within missile range. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/47 "2004-04-22T10:48:16Z")
> [@iamme99](#): > > I brought up the idea that at least 2 of the planes SHOULD have been stopped and/or shot down in another thread a while back and was kicked in the ass for saying it. It’s good to see that many more people here seem to have regained their senses. Now why are Bush’s poll numbers not crashing? I don’t know about the practicalities of interceptions on the day. Perhaps it’s conceivable that the mightiest military ever could not protect its continental airspace from internally hijacked aircraft despite a massive airforce. My point is (apart from nailing the ‘unthinkable’ lie) - with all the warnings, with explict drills with the precise targets, why was this the case? And why the hell have we not seen freshly sliced butts on a platter? It so pisses me off that nowadays, in the UK as much as anywhere, the buck never stops anywhere near anybody. Dammit - when something like this happens on your watch, particularly when it is clear the threat was thinkable and the clues lying around waiting for someone to make the Al-Q issue a priority and shake the tree for missing bits of the puzzle, honour demands resignations - not weasel word denials of culpability, the hounding of anyone who says otherwise and taking it as an excuse to attack a country completely unconnected with the event, on a shifting ground of speciousness. > [@](#): > > In 1982, the Falklands were invaded. Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary, resigned. In his memoirs, Reflections on Things Past (Collins), he gave a full description of events and said ‘It was not a sense of culpability that led me to resign … the country felt angry and humiliated. I felt the same myself … it was right, in my judgement, that there should be a resignation … the disgrace must be purged … the person to purge it must be me … My departure would put a stop to the search for scapegoats’. Peter Carrington went on to hold high office as Secretary General of NATO and he continues to command respect as a man of honour. [Falklands War resignation](http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2242/1640_281/91971264/p1/article.jhtml) I count Carrington as culpable for defence cuts that sent Argentina misleading signals, but at least the old duffer had some sense of decency. The WTC attack was not unthinkable, the military was not prepared for the eventuality despite all the drills. Someone, even at this late stage, now that we know it wasn’t unthinkable, just that the Administration chose not to think about it seriously enough and/or was inexcusably ignorant of threats some agency as central as NORAD was thinking about, someone should do the decent thing. As Defence Sec it happened on Rumsfeld’s watch. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/48 "2004-04-22T11:15:09Z")
I think we have to take into account some psychological factors at work on September 10 to understand the delay in response on September 11. **First of all, as far as I can recall there hadn’t been a hijacking of a major airliner in the US for 25, maybe even 30 years.** That’s a long time. After all that time, there’s a very human tendency to think “Well, it hasn’t happened… so it \*won’t \* happen.” BOMBS on airplanes yes - Pan Am 103 is still relatively fresh in everyone’s mind. But hijacking’s? Added to this - the assumption regarding hijacking weapons was usually a gun - which (supposedly) were kept off airplanes by security. The Bad Guys got the boxcutters on board because they were perceived as tools, not weapons. (This outlook has been revised, as we all know). So a lot of folks were walking around thinking hijackings were either impossible or extremely unlikely. (And they were wrong, but they didn’t know that at the time) **Second, the FAA rules assumed hijackers wanted to live.** Seriously, the rules were to cooperate with hijackers. That’s because for 40 or 50 years hijackers wanted to live - they wanted to go somewhere, or get some sort of ransom, or free a prisoner. The hijackings had some motive other than death and destruction. Thus, there would have been reluctance to call in the big guns - many past hijackings were resolved with no loss of life. Unfortunately, these rules backfired with hijackers on a suicide mission. \*\*Airplanes have hit buildings before - accidently. \*\* A LOT of people, hearing the first tower was hit, assumed it was an accident. Obviously, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong, but there was no proof there was an \*intent \* to hit the building until later. Even among those who knew the plane was hijacked, I’d suspect the first thought was that the hijackers had screwed up and accidently hit the tower, not that they had \*delibrately \* hit the tower. As I said, other building had been hit before. In fact, a New York skyscraper had been hit before - during WWII a bomber ran into the Empire State Building. So yes, I think the first thought was “Aw, crap, that was a bad accident”. It was not until the _second_ tower was hit that it became obvious that this was a planned catastrophe. So start your countdown from \*that \* point, not the first impact. **It takes time to launch a fighter.** I don’t have an exact number, but I keep hearing “15 minutes” bandied about. Thinking about it, getting up, getting geared up, getting out to the plane, and taking off in 15 minutes would be pushing it even in the smaller, less sophisticated planes I fly. Wow, the Air Force would really need some hot team work to launch that quick - and that assuming airplanes fully pre-flighted, fueled, and ready to go. Of course, we expect that from the military. So, OK, they have 36 minutes between the second tower impact and the Pentagon impact. 15 minutes prep and launch leaves only 19 minutes to catch up with the airliners - which travel hundreds of miles an hour (remember, the hijackers were flying them faster than usual) while dodging civilian traffic scrambling to land as ordered at the nearest airfield - which in many instances those civilians planes were unfamillar with. The fighters do no good if they smack into a Cessna 172 on their way to the firefight. The faster you go, the harder it is to dodge. The trick is to get there fast enough enough to do some good, but not so fast you collide with another aircraft along the way. \*\*You have to find the hijacked plane. \*\* This is more difficult than you might think. Sure, in _retrospect_, gazing at and carefully analysing radar records, you can track the four hijacked planes but in real time, not knowing what’s really going on, it was much more difficult. Normally, when ATC needs to track a paticular plane they tell their computer to tag it and follow it - but that depends on a transponder signal. And on 9/11 the hijackers _turned off the transponders._ So, instead of the computer tracking, it had to be done by eyeball. That’s one, unmmarked blip among hundreds - if not thousands - of radar returns in an area. This is NOT easy! So not only would fighters have to launch quickly and dodge air traffic en route, they’d have to FIND the errant jets. This is WHY everyone was ordered out of the air - there were too many radar returns, too many planes to choose from. Landing everyone else was the only way to cut down on the mess of visual information on the radar screens, leaving only the hijacked planes visible. But airplanes don’t land instantly, it takes time. So… over a half an hour you have to scramble the jets, land every \*other \* airplane in the United States, AND catch up with Bad Guys charging along at hundreds of miles per hour, whose location you aren’t sure of. Looked at that way, a half an hour really is not much time. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/49 "2004-04-22T11:32:39Z")
You’re missing the point. It wasn’t unthinkable, as you are essentially maintaining. It was thinkable, drills were done and still the US was unprepared. It’s no use repeating reasons why it was excusable given the military posture of the time. The question is why, given the known threat at high levels of the DoD, was the posture inadequate and why has no-one accepted any responsibility? ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/50 "2004-04-22T11:37:51Z")
And as for their cunning ploy of switching off transponders - go for the one’s on radar with no transponders or deviating from their flight path. Surely not a feat beyond the US military or do any incoming Muslim hordes just have to turn off transponders to become invisible? Why do we need stealth technology if all it takes is turning off a transponder to just blend in with civilian aircraft and be indistuinguishable from them? I don’t buy that at any price. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/51 "2004-04-22T12:16:31Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > **It takes time to launch a fighter.** I don’t have an exact number, but I keep hearing “15 minutes” bandied about. Thinking about it, getting up, getting geared up, getting out to the plane, and taking off in 15 minutes would be pushing it even in the smaller, less sophisticated planes I fly. Wow, the Air Force would really need some hot team work to launch that quick - and that assuming airplanes fully pre-flighted, fueled, and ready to go. Of course, we expect that from the military. So, OK, they have 36 minutes between the second tower impact and the Pentagon impact. 15 minutes prep and launch leaves only 19 minutes to catch up with the airliners - which travel hundreds of miles an hour (remember, the hijackers were flying them faster than usual) while dodging civilian traffic scrambling to land as ordered at the nearest airfield - which in many instances those civilians planes were unfamillar with. The fighters do no good if they smack into a Cessna 172 on their way to the firefight. The faster you go, the harder it is to dodge. The trick is to get there fast enough enough to do some good, but not so fast you collide with another aircraft along the way. > > \ > > Looked at that way, a half an hour really is not much time. Time for another fact injection, I think. Two F15s had been scrambled and were in the air when Flight 175 (the second plane) crashed. They were about 70 miles from New York at the time. So too late there. They were apparently ordered to continue patrolling the New York skies, I guess to guard against any further hits on New York. > [@](#): > > [Complete 911 Timeline: United Airlines Flight 175 > Project: Complete 911 Timeline > Compiled by Paul Thompson](http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_911=ua175) > > \*\*8:52 a.m. \*\* > > Two F-15s take off from Otis ANG Base, six minutes after being ordered to go after Flight 11, which has already crashed. [8:52, NORAD, 9/18/01, 8:52, CNN, 9/17/01, 8:53, Washington Post, 9/12/01, 8:52, Washington Post, 9/15/01, 8:52, ABC News, 9/11/02] This is 38 minutes after flight controllers lost contact with the plane. They go after Flight 175 instead. According to Lt. Col. Timothy Duffy, one of the pilots, before takeoff, a fellow officer had told him “This looks like the real thing.” He says, “It just seemed wrong. I just wanted to get there. I was in full-blower all the way.” A NORAD commander has said the planes were stocked with extra fuel as well. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02] An F-15 can travel over 1875 mph. [Air Force News, 7/30/97] Duffy later says, “As we’re climbing out, we go supersonic on the way, which is kind of nonstandard for us.” He says his target destination is over Kennedy airport in New York City. > > \ > > \*\*(9:03 a.m. and After) \*\* > > The minute Flight 175 hits the south tower, F-15 pilot Major Daniel Nash says that clear visibility allows him to see smoke pour out of Manhattan, even though NORAD says he is 71 miles away. However, he says he can’t recall actually being told of the Flight 11 hit. [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/02] He isn’t told about the danger of Flight 175 until after it too has crashed and he is 60 miles away. [ABC, 9/14/02] And instead of being ordered to New York City, the two F-15s are ordered to hover in a 150-mile chunk of air space off the coast of Long Island. Nash states,“Neither the civilian controller or the military controller knew what they wanted us to do.” But then a few minutes later, they receive orders to head to Manhattan for combat air patrol, and they do that for the next four hours. At no point are these pilots given permission to shoot down any airliners. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/52 "2004-04-22T12:40:23Z")
Ok in that case **What did Clinton know and when did he know it!** :mad: Actually I’m glad that we were at least considering the possibility, too bad it couldn’t be intercepted. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/53 "2004-04-22T13:31:14Z")
> [@](#): > > logistical reality in the midst of all this partisanship; > [@](#): > > I think we have to take into account some psychological factors at work on September 10 Partsianshp? Psychological factors? What the heck are we paying those wankers at NORAD for ? > [@](#): > > “ **Deter, Detect, Defend**.” That is the motto of the men and women who serve in the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Since 1958, Canadians and Americans have been partners in protecting the airspace of Alaska, Canada and the contiguous 48 United States. [NORAD](http://www.norad.mil/) NORAD took the threat seriously enough to run simulations with real airplanes, yet they didn’t bother to blow the smoke out of the command and control lines so that if anything like 9/11 should, god forbid, happen, they’d be able to _do something about it_. What’s the scoop on NORAD in the late 90’s anyway? Did it develop a reputation as a “party posting”? Have they cleaned up their act? Of course, it takes two to miscommunicate. How plugged up was the president’s link to our military eyes and ears, and has he done anything to improve it? ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/54 "2004-04-22T13:49:37Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > Partsianshp? Psychological factors? What the heck are we paying those wankers at NORAD for ? IMHO, the military worked _reasonably_ well on the day. 38 minutes from the first inkling ay the FAA that something might possibly be wrong, to getting fighters in the air. It’s the actions of the WH that really bear scrutiny. They scratched their asses for weeks and months, not minutes. And in the final analysis, did nothing whatsoever. The attitude seems to have been “Hijacking? Who the fuck cares about that? Might even work to our advantage.” ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/55 "2004-04-22T14:54:33Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > IMHO, the military worked _reasonably_ well on the day. 38 minutes from the first inkling ay the FAA that something might possibly be wrong, to getting fighters in the air. > > It’s the actions of the WH that really bear scrutiny. They scratched their asses for weeks and months, not minutes. And in the final analysis, did nothing whatsoever. > > The attitude seems to have been “Hijacking? Who the fuck cares about that? Might even work to our advantage.” Quite. The question is - who is going to accept responsibility for this being the best job they could do against a known threat? The buck has to stop someone senior and for me, Rumsfeld, as Sec of Def is that place. But as a Brit I was bought up on the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. It is unthinkable, even with the current Govt, that such a failure, in such a dreadful circumstance, would not produce ministerial resignations at the highest level. If Hutton had had any harsh words to say about anyone but the BBC we’d have seen Hoon (Minister for Defence) resigning over a suicide. No question whatsoever he’d have gone if the RAF had been drilling for a plane attack on Parliament and the MoD had then done nothing to ensure such a scenario could not happen in reality. Ignorance would have been no excuse - just a sign you were not doing your job properly. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/56 "2004-04-22T16:03:39Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > Quite. The question is - who is going to accept responsibility for this being the best job they could do against a known threat? The buck has to stop someone senior and for me, Rumsfeld, as Sec of Def is that place. Or, if they want to play the blame game, Clinton for de-emphasizing NORAD. There was some serious misundercommunication at the command level, and as far as I can tell, it’s never been completely acknowledged, much less corrected. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/57 "2004-04-22T17:11:22Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > **First of all, as far as I can recall there hadn’t been a hijacking of a major airliner in the US for 25, maybe even 30 years.** That’s a long time. After all that time, there’s a very human tendency to think “Well, it hasn’t happened… so it \*won’t \* happen.” BOMBS on airplanes yes - Pan Am 103 is still relatively fresh in everyone’s mind. But hijacking’s? The average citizen might not think of this, but that’s exactly what the contingency planners are supposed to do. Some folks in government do nothing _but_ think of worst-case “unthinkable” scenarios and make plans in respose to them. > [@Broomstick](#): > > \*\*Airplanes have hit buildings before - accidently. \*\* A LOT of people, hearing the first tower was hit, assumed it was an accident. Obviously, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong, but there was no proof there was an \*intent \* to hit the building until later. Again, the folks in NORAD already knew something was very wrong when they were tracking _four_ airliners making U-turns in the sky – by the time the first one hit the tower, there should have been sirens blaring and flashing red lights all over the place. Just because John Q. Public didn’t know three other airliners were hijacked and making beelines for NYC and Washington DC doesn’t mean the guys upstairs were equally clueless. > [@Broomstick](#): > > Even among those who knew the plane was hijacked, I’d suspect the first thought was that the hijackers had screwed up and accidently hit the tower, not that they had \*delibrately \* hit the tower. Considering the lack of radio communication between the hijacked airplanes and anyone else, not bloody likely. Even a terrorist planning to hijack an airplane, land it on a runway, and start making demands would need to talk to the air traffic control tower to get a runway cleared. > [@Broomstick](#): > > It was not until the _second_ tower was hit that it became obvious that this was a planned catastrophe. So start your countdown from \*that \* point, not the first impact. …and George W. Bush continued reading stories to second graders. > [@Broomstick](#): > > **It takes time to launch a fighter.** I don’t have an exact number, but I keep hearing “15 minutes” bandied about. Thinking about it, getting up, getting geared up, getting out to the plane, and taking off in 15 minutes would be pushing it even in the smaller, less sophisticated planes I fly. It’s been a while since I worked on an air defense system, but if a base is running “hot” and alerted ahead of time, launching a fighter under a minute is not unheard of. And again, suspicious were already raised when the airplanes began making their turns… > [@Broomstick](#): > > \*\*You have to find the hijacked plane. \*\* This is more difficult than you might think. Sure, in _retrospect_, gazing at and carefully analysing radar records, you can track the four hijacked planes but in real time, not knowing what’s really going on, it was much more difficult. > > Normally, when ATC needs to track a paticular plane they tell their computer to tag it and follow it - but that depends on a transponder signal. And on 9/11 the hijackers _turned off the transponders._ So what? They were still on radar. Besides, enemy aircraft in a war zone don’t have transponders for us to track, either, but the Air Force can still find 'em with ease. Something as big and (relatively) slow as an airliner would be a cakewalk by comparison. Sorry, I still don’t buy the excuses. ---
**Author:** ![HoldOnThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e36b37/32.png) [@HoldOnThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoldOnThere)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/58 "2004-04-22T17:21:40Z")
I agree that the military scrambled the fighter jets reasonably fast given the circumstances. My question is why did the fighters have to fly down from Cape Cod Massachusetts? There is nothing to protect out there. It’s because our defenses are still set up to protect us from international threats and they are looking towards the ocean. Hey defense department, wake up and rethink the strategy! I hope the military has relocated some fighter jets closer to the NY metro area since then. If jets were scrambled from McQuire Air Force base in NJ, they could probably be in NYC in less than 5 minutes. What they would do when they got there is another issue. Imagine if they had shot down the second jetliner before it hit the tower. That would open up much more complicated issues that simply fighting terrorists. Sacrificing some civilians to save others? Man, I would hate to try and figure that out. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/59 "2004-04-22T19:14:54Z")
> [@censored](#): > > NORAD probably had scores of inaccurate reports coming in; they did what they could. Bush and Cheney can’t control how fast the planes get within missile range. So which excuse are we going with here? **Silenus’s** excuse that it took the civilan government 36 minutes to _decide_, or _your_ excuse that it took 36 minutes to get the pilots out of their jammies and into their flight suits? Or are you guys just gonna make up _new_ excuses each time the previous excuse gets debunked? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![censored](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/35a633/32.png) [@censored](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/censored)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2004, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/60 "2004-04-22T20:16:16Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > So which excuse are we going with here? **Silenus’s** excuse that it took the civilan government 36 minutes to _decide_, or _your_ excuse that it took 36 minutes to get the pilots out of their jammies and into their flight suits? Or are you guys just gonna make up _new_ excuses each time the previous excuse gets debunked? :rolleyes: I think I’ll go with my excuse - it is mine, after all. 🙂 I don’t think it was political delay. I think the fighters were not launched fast enough in the fog of war and just couldn’t get there fast enough. Flight 93, I’ve read, probably would have been shot down had it not gone down by itself - there were even conspiracy theories that 93 was shot down and then covered up. You can fault Bush for not having foresight and reworking the system beforehand so that it didn’t take that long to launch and get the fighters there, fine. That’s reasonable. I just don’t think you can blame the administration for not making it work faster with the system that was in place. “Hey, General, get those planes there faster!” “Yes, Mr. President! We’ll enable the hyperafterburners on those F-15s and get there instantly!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009.md?page=4)