You're VPOTUS and allies are about to shoot down Air Force One

What do you do?

POTUS is visiting a good ally. Air Force One has entered that country’s air space and nobody there can raise it. Fighters have been scrambled, are alongside and cannot raise it. America cannot contact the plane. The ally’s standard protocol is that in such a situation an ordinary airliner would be shot down. The Head of Government of your ally is on the phone to you right now. You have a minute or two before civilians on the ground are in danger, at which point your ally will shoot down the plane.

What do you do?

If you have fighters alongside, and waggling in front of it, with no response, something is SERIOUSLY wrong. Shoot.

Yeah, if they’re not even getting a response that indicates “hey, the radio’s down but we see the fighter jets”, shoot. That’s, like, a zombie infection or something.

Depends, is Harrison Ford available?

The Vice President of the United States is not in the chain of command. No one is going to be calling him for military authorization for anything.

Doesn’t AF1 have its own fighter escort?

Indeed, he’s conflicted, at least if he’s psychopathically shrewd. If I were the VP, I might be inclined to tell my military contacts, “if you ever might have to shoot down the President, I don’t want to know anything about it.”

The Vice President might not be in the chain of command, but the Acting President is. Inability to communicate sounds like an incapacitation of the President, to me.

That sounds like a depressurization incident has killed the pilots, leaving the plane to wander off into oblivion. Given that we’re talking about Air Force One, not some random plane that just took off from Libya or Syria, I’d tell them not to shoot. The “optics” of shooting down Air Force One are really bad, about as bad as they could possibly be. It’ll crash when it runs out of fuel.

Just don’t start measuring the Oval Office until after the crash.

But that has to be agreed upon by the VP and the cabinet, then transmitted to the President Pro Tem of the Senate and Speaker of the House. Not likely to happen in the time frame allowed by the OP’s scenario.

Exactly, the VP is not the acting president except when the cabinet gets together and declares him acting president. Or if the president declares in writing that he’s not able to carry out the duties for a while, then the VP is acting president until the president declares he’s back on the job. The President being asleep or not answering his phone doesn’t make the VP acting president.

The VP has absolutely no command authority. His only constitutional duty is to preside over the Senate and take over when the President kicks it. Whatever decision is made, it might be made with the advice of the VP, but the VP does not make the decision.

Tell them not to shoot down AF1.

I’d say very loudly “don’t shoot it down” but immediately after, silently mouth the words “shoot it down” to the military commanders.

Then I’d start moving my stuff in, measuring up and have a spin on the oval office chair going “wheeee!”

Too bad: in this scenario the VPOTUS is the one on the American end of the phone. And we’re not talking about authorising American military action anyway.

It’s a little difficult to mouth silently over the telephone.

Do you people seriously believe that the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs would act that way? The Veep carries a copy of the launch codes, for Pete’s sake! OF COURSE he’s in the chain of command–not officially, no, but as a practical matter, of course he is. And even a small amount of reasoning will tell you why.

Fairly sure it does. Also there’s a backup AF1 which I believe follows it around in case of mechanical problems.

On 9/11. a plane flight 77 was headed towards D.C. and someone asked Dick Cheney
about the :“Orders”
he wanted it to enter D.C’s restricted air space. yes. it’s transponder was off. but
NO Jets were sent up.
Hmmmmm.
Want to ask some questions?

I’m pretty sure that such communications are handled via massive video screens in huge, spartan and technologically advanced control rooms.
There may also be a cat involved.

As others have noted, in this scenario the VP (or indeed anyone in the US chain of command) has no direct influence over whether AF1 is shot down or not - that decision rests with the leadership and / or military of the allied nation in question, and per the OP the default position is to fire.

The way I see see it, the VP has the following options:

  1. Do nothing. AF1 will be shot down, prompting a major diplomatic incident.
  2. Beg / cajole / threaten / bribe the allied nation to refrain from shooting down AF1. In the best (unlikely) case, the plane will recover and land safely. In the worst (and more likely case) the plane will crash. If it hits a populated area and results in a serious death toll on the ground, a major diplomatic incident will ensue.
  3. Order (or get the US military to order) the American escort fighters to defend AF1 by engaging the allied jets which will be firing on the President’s plane. A MAJOR diplomatic incident will ensue.
  4. Order the American escort fighters to shoot down AF1. Wouldn’t happen, but this is the sang-froid, Billy Big-Bollocks option.

I think the only sensible course of action for the VP is to ask himself or herself “what would we expect to happen if the situation was reversed, and it was the head of the allied nation flying into Washington DC?” - and follow the same course of action here. That would inevitably mean accepting that the jet will be shot down.