So, anybody know what the story is with those NORAD drills?
Ah yes.
NORAD had two major things going on that day.
The first was Operation Northern Vigilance. This was a real-world operation, involving the movement of fighter aircraft to Alaska and Canada to shadow Russian long-range bombers that were involved in an exercise in Siberia.
Basically, throughout the Cold War and into the present, when either side moves their attack force closer to the "enemy" for an exercise, the other wise will move its defence force closer in response to keep an eye on them. While the Russian operation is simply an exercise, the NATO operation is very much "real-world" (hence the "Operation" tag at the beginning).
The other thing that was going on was a yearly NORAD exercise called "Guardian". Guardian consists of two Command Post Exercises (CPXs), so often it is incorrectly identified as two different exercises.
Basically, in a CPX you get all your command post staff in their positions, but no actual aircraft take part in the operation - computers simulate troop movements instead. So when Squadron X are moved to location Z, on the computer screens at the Command Post the squadron is shown to have moved, but in reality the Squadron aren't involved at all.
The two Command Posts involved were US Strategic Command and US Space Command.
NORAD exercise codenames use two words. The first word indicates the command that is involved, and the second name indicates the type of exercise.
The names allocated to different commands are done alphabetically in letter blocks. Each exercise may have a different name, but by looking at the first two letters of the first word you can work out which command is involved.
If you look at
this list you'll see what I mean.
The two parts of the Guardian exercise (that you will often heard CTers naming as two different exercises) are "Global" and "Vigilant".
In the list you'll see that block 26 GG-GL is allocated to US Strategic Command, so we know that "Global Guardian" refers to the US Strategic Command CPX.
Further down, Block 86 VG-VL is allocated to US Space Command, so we know "Vigilant Guardian" refers to the US Space Command CPX.
So, what IS Guardian?
Guardian is an exercise that tests US defences to a Russian Nuclear Attack. Most of the exercise involves the two CPs coordinating the nation's response to waves of Russian nuclear bombers and nuclear missiles.
However, they often throw in additional problems to add a bit of spice - for example an airliner coming into the US and getting hijacked. It appears that a hijacking was scheduled into the 2001 Guardian Exercise at some point.
However, it is important to remember that such a hijacking was to be conventional, and not involving ramming a building.
You will also sometimes hear an exercise called "Amalgam Warrior" mentioned, which involves Drone Aircraft. This is a "live-fly" (or "field") exercise, involving the intercept of drones by fighter aircraft.
Amalgam Warrior was held in June, 2001.
The big question is, did Guardian interfere with NORAD's response to 9/11? First, bear in mind neither Guardian, nor the real world operation I mentioned involved the 14 fighters at Ready-Alert on 7 Continential US air bases. In additional neither of these actions involved NEADS - the NORAD controllers responsible for responding to the 9/11 hijackings.
However, NORAD further indicated that the CPXs actually ENHANCED response, because all of the necessary staff were already at their seats. Normally some would not be there.
This is indicated in a quesiton to Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff Richard Myers.
The transcript of that exchange can be found
here:
The relevant section is quoted below:
(CMK is Representative Cynthia McKinney and RM is Richard Myers)
31:25
CMK: The question was, we had four wargames going on on September 11th, and the question that I tried to pose before the Secretary had to go to lunch was whether or not the activities of the four wargames going on on September 11th actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks.
RM: The answer to the question is no, it did not impair our response, in fact General Eberhart who was in the command of the North American Aerospace Defense Command as he testified in front of the 9/11 Commission I believe - I believe he told them that it enhanced our ability to respond, given that NORAD didn't have the overall responsibility for responding to the attacks that day. That was an FAA responsibility. But they were two CPXs; there was one Department of Justice exercise that didn't have anything to do with the other three; and there was an actual operation ongoing because there was some Russian bomber activity up near Alaska. So we -
So there you have it.
-Andrew
