Once again, well argued, well written and very polite to silly old me. But I still disagree. And I suspect that I always will--I'll explain that at the end.
I have no problem taking the time to discuss matters with someone who is polite, respectful, and appears to read what I have written. So thank you too.
The 48 minutes comes from the first plane striking at 8:46 AM Eastern Time--It was a suspected hi-jack before that time and the Pentagon getting hit around 9:30 AM. I forget the exact time that the building was struck. Is it impossible to get something resembling a defense up in that amount of time? If it is, I think we're living on borrowed time in this land of ours.
Explanation: Perhaps you are right. Perhaps you are totaly on point about how everything worked just like it was designed to work that morning. Okay. Who designed it? Who designed a system by which a plane is hi-jacked, crashed into a building, followed by another plane crashing into another building on world-wide television and the response at the nation's capitol is to not put a single jet over the airspace? The response between WTC 1 and WTC 2 getting hit was apparently thinking that Washington was not going to be hit. Very well. But what would it have hurt to send a few aircraft up to simply be on patrol just in case...I stringently disagree that the seat of our government is not a vital asset. If I stated the "military's" most vital asset is the Pentagon, I was mistaken.
I'll address this collective as one, because really it's all part of the same point. I understand where you are coming from. Many people - both conspiracy theorists and those who accept the official account of the attacks - express outright stunned disbelief that these four hijacked aircraft were not stopped. It's far from a unique characteristic of Conspiracy Theorists.
One of the reasons I specifically investigated this claim was that I felt it was worthy of investigating, unlike, say, claims that the WTC towers were demolished.
My investigation was in two parts:
1) What were the capabilities of the defense network on the morning of 9/11?
2) Did the actual actions of the defense network fall short of, match, or exceed these capabilities?
The reality is no form of protection is absolute. From condoms to seatbelts to fighter interceptors.
This is the crux of our disagreement, I think. Many people (understandably) have a false expectation that the air defense network can prevent absolutely all threats. It may shock some Americans to learn that in the event of a full scale Russian air attack, with NORAD deploying all of their air sovereignty assets in defense, the military anticipated they would stop less than half of all Russian bombers from penetrating US airspace. That's with the full SCATANA plan functioning.
(The SCATANA Plan was a plan that turned over full control of US airspace and radar monitoring to the military and established a free-fire ROE, in the event of a full scale attack).
So that's NORAD's full bells and whistle prime task, and they anticipated less than 50% success rates. This is not an acceptance of defeat, or a lack of commitment, it's an acknowledgment of the realities of the situation. You simply cannot protect the airspace of an entire continent.
It wasn't an option to implement SCATANA on a daily basis - the USA have a strong resistance to the military being involved in daily activities and the civil airline transport industry was a vital part of the country. This meant in the event of full scale war there was a change over period from the peacetime FAA-operated airspace to SCATANA military-operated airspace. I don't know what the anticipated turnover was for this, but I think it's safe to assume it was a number of hours, if not days.
Anticipating that an attack might come without warning, NORAD was tasked with the additional duty of providing a 24/7 skeleton crew of air defenders to protect the nation. In the event of a surprise attack these scramble crews would sell their lives against overwhelming odds in the hope of buying the country enough time to implement a broader defense.
Even such a minimal crew was enormously expensive, but it was vital to protect the nation.
But as the Cold War ended and the Soviet threat faded, and as society became more liberal and pacifist, military budgets tightened dramatically. Anything that wasn't vital was scrapped or severely trimmed. NORAD's alert sites were eyed by politicians looking to cut military spending, and by military officers desperate to channel funds into more important areas.
The statistics simply showed that the NORAD alert sites were a wasted resource. Some alert sites did not have a single scramble. The vast majority that did were against drug smugglers.
NORAD's assets were slashed. The number of alert sites was reduced repeatedly over several decades. Military budgets were further slashed under Clinton's administration, in the face of a relatively peaceful globe (as least as far as the US was concerned). While those actually running the air defense mission warned that NORAD's capabilities were dangerous weak, and warned of asymmetrical air threats from rogue entities such as terrorists (NORAD considered cruise missiles or hijacked airliners from overseas to be the most significant threats), the politicians kept cutting back again and again, until by 2001 NORAD were left with fourteen pairs of fighters at seven alert sites to protect the entire contiguous USA.
And then 9/11 happened.
NORAD couldn't respond effectively for a number of reasons:
1) Depleted defense assets as explained above
2) Multiple coordinated attacks required multiple defense assets to respond
3) Close distribution of attacks both chronologically and geographically limited ability to use limited defense assets to respond to multiple threats
4) Domestic origin of attack fell outside protocol and drastically increased time it took for NORAD to be informed, while also drastically decreases window in which response could be undertaken
5) Suicide nature of attack fell outside protocol and was not clear until attack was 50% complete
6) Random events that happen in any such situation that hampered efforts (AA77 hijacking in non-primary area, miscommunication over AA11, miscommunication over scramble direction for F-16s, etc)
Mixed in with these points is a single common theme that I briefly discussed in explaining why SCATANA was not implemented on a daily basis. The USA has a long tradition of freedom, and a long tradition of distrusting authority - especially authority backed by military force. Their laws stringently restrict the ways in which the military can be used - far more than most other western countries. This is evident in things like the Posse Comitatus Act, but it's also evident in the operating protocol of many government departments including the military.
The protocols for hijacking were no different. Protocol strictly forbids military aircraft being used to apprehend hijackers or as a platform for gunfire. Protocol also strictly leaves authorisation for involving the military in the hands of the civilian FAA. The military do not have free reign in the air of the USA. If the situation is serious enough to warrant that, SCATANA is implemented. Otherwise the military are required to play by the FAA's rules, just like everyone else.
And the FAA's rules for a hijacking were very clear. They were based on a number of expectations, the most fundamental being that the hijackers wanted to live. To live they had to land, eventually, and the land they needed the pilots.
The prime objective in an aircraft hijacking, for every single aviation authority in every country in the world, was to
get the aircraft on the ground.
This is so vital I'm going to repeat it.
The key goal in an aircraft hijacking was to get the aircraft on the ground.
Nothing could happen until the airliner was on the ground. Once it was on an airport tarmac counter terrorism teams, negotiators, law enforcement and every one else could resolve the situation, either peacefully or violently.
Everything hinged on the hijacked aircraft landing. Including military involvement. The military's only role was to accompany the aircraft to a runway and keep an eye on it - not to stop it.
But on 9/11 the hijackers didn't play by what were well established rules. Bear in mind that in the late 90's even regular suicide bombers were uncommon. Suicide airline hijackings were the sole domain of rare deranged madmen.
And the problem, of course, was the hijackers
knew that pretending to play by the rules was vital to their success. So they did. They threatened, and they expressed a desire to head to airports, and they assured passengers no one would be hurt.
It wasn't until UA175 hit WTC2 that anyone could seriously understand that an entirely new type of attack was underway. An hour later it was all over. Is sixty minutes really long enough to rewrite the book on such a situation? Considering the far-reaching implications of new rules (military involvement in law enforcement, destroying private property, intentionally targetting your own citizens...)
Now, back to those six points...
Four of the above six points were not failures by the air defense system, but successes by Al Qaeda. In military terms a rapid, coordinated multi-prong surprise attack is the absolute hardest to respond to. Al Qaeda knew this.
The last point is simply the nature of combat - random unforseen events occur which make life hard for you. The same happened for Al Qaeda - for example UA93's delayed departure allowed the passengers to learn their fate and start a revolt.
The only point above which really lies squarely with the US air defense system is the depletion of assets. I've explained why that happened. It wasn't a case of a lazy officer, or even just a single politician. Reduced expenditure on a costly air defense network that was never used was the will of the entire nation. If you want to blame someone, ultimately the blame lies squarely with the American people. Their reprimand wasn't a court martial or expulsion from office. It was 3,000 dead citizens.
-Gumboot
