Our skies are protected mostly by Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). The primary defenses are MIM-104 and likely some remaining MIM-23s.

It is impossible for an aircraft to penetrate the defenses of America's most sensitive military installation, the Pentagon, without a SAM response. The ability of a civilian A/C to do this has never been explained.

Still the decision to shoot down the aircraft a la Darth would have political suicide, and that's all they think about, politics. Fuck the buildings and the people, they would rather squander those lives for political gain, than lose 600 +/-. I don't know what I would do.

There is no "choice." The arm-and-launch system for the MIM-104 is completely automatic. The system can only be turned off.

Well now that is interesting to know. Some one turned it off.

And WHY would anyone issue the the orders to de-activate the automatic deployment for America's most sensitive military installation? There should have been some Court-martial, like that of Adm H. Kimmel in Pearl Harbor, right? I believe there was no court-martial, because it would disclose WHO issued the order to turn off the protection, i.e. Dick Cheney.

BTW: I know that USMC artillery has been drilling on the very 9/11 scenario since the mid-1980s. Don't take my word for it - look it up.

I would be very surprised to see any sort of fully automated defense system set up just a few miles away from Reagan National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base. It would be a requiem for disaster. There are air defense systems, no doubt. But they won't have them on auto. I simple mechanical failure could lead to a Civilian airliner being downed.

Dispite popular belief, prior to 9/11/01, we did not operate as Fortress America. Our distant early warning system was designed to detect and counter threats from without, not from within. This has changed since 9/11 of 2001.

Think that a massive air defense system will stop everything? Not even the Soviet's state of the art and top of the line air defense system stopped a young German named Mathias Rust from landing his aircraft in Red Square.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...75BC0A96E948260

Proof?

9/11/2001.

Being that the only thing we have to worry about is Chinese containers and American aircraft, this administration can blow up what ever they want.

I don't know why I expected an answer from you.

Pitiful. And completely clueless.

That's not proof ... that only shows that a failure occurred ... somehow.

Then you would be very surprised Most sensitive military and utility installations are protected. If you were to, say turn a plane around unexpectedly, and say, fly it toward the San Onofre nuclear reactor, you would be very surprised by a SAM interception.

Read up on the USS Vincennes and Iran Air flight 655.

Making the argument that the Russians are defensless is apples and oranges. The Russians don't have the SAMs we do. I don't know the stats on the MIM-104, but the old MIM-23 has a range of 19 miles and a deck of 60 feet, you cannot out-fly it and it it lethal.

Fully armed Combat Air Patrol missions (CAP) were not routinely flown over the lower 48 prior to 9/11 (and after the Cuban Missile Crisis). I've dug this information up before and posted it on other forums. I'll give you all the same courtesy later today when time permits. Please note the use of the word "rountinely" in this claim.

In the meantime, here is a website that looks to have a fairly accurate timeline in regards to the scrambling of jet fighter interceptors on 9/11. Note that some of them had to launch with only solid non-explosive 20 mike mike target rounds and without missiles .....................

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a903ssandrews

I submit that the site is bullshit.

Why? Because America's airspace is protected by automatic SAMs. The MSM and the Nazicons have to idiotically keep saying that we are protected by jet-jockeys to keep logical and informed people from pointing this out.

Everyone, are you listening?

Here: America is protected by SAM installations at sensitive locations. There.

But don't take my word for it - check it out for yourselves.

We can tract every thing under the water, in the air and in outer space..... but a man with a cane cannot be found.

OK

I'm listening to the beginning of the show from Portland.

I was pretty sure why this came up.

There is only one way that the air defenses could have failed.Somebody somewhere had to say, Oh, don't worry about it.

These things(responses) are and have for years been automatic. Somebody had to actually say "don't worry about it".

Anybody remember Payne Stewart?

Are you referring to this incident in regards to Payne Stewart?

http://www.airsafe.com/stewart.htm

Apparently the jet he was on malfunctioned. The crew was somehow incompacitated and the jet crashed after it ran out of fuel while on autopilot.

I don't understand the relevance of this to the topic. Yes, the plane was tracked by chase planes who observed frosted over windows on the Cockpit of the doomed plane. But there was nothing that they could do about it.

If you are unimpressed with the HistoryCommons.Org website, which extensively footnotes from the 9/11 Commission, Washington Post, Aviation Week and Space Technology, MSNBC and the District of Columbia National Guard N.D., then there is nothing that I can possibly write that will change your mind on this matter, SickupandFed.

It's a waste of your time reading and my time in typing.

If you want to believe that a mighty fully armed armada constantly sails and flies around right off our shoreline in a great circle, Fine. If you believe a fully automated missile system protects us without the hand of man touching the controls like some Terminator SkyNet system, Great. If you believe that Vice President Cheney hit the "OFF" switch on purpose, shutting the whole thing down on 9/11 to Let It Happen On Purpose, Peachy.

I have, Adam.

Here's the word from a noted Bush neocon.

http://www.jod911.com/There_Are_No_Missile...he_Pentagon.pdf

The Secret Service and Customs had teamed up in Atlanta to provide some rudimentary air
defense against an aircraft flying into the Olympic Stadium. They did so again during the
subsequent National Security Special Events and they agreed to create a permanent air defense
unit to protect Washington. Unfortunately, those two federal law enforcement agencies were
housed in the Treasury Department and its leadership did not want to pay for such a mission or
run the liability risks of shooting down the wrong aircraft. Treasury nixed the air defense unit,
and my attempts within the White House to overfule them came to naught. The idea of aircraft
attacking in Washington seemed remote to many people and the risks of shooting down aircraft
in a city were thought to be far too high. Moreover, the opponents of our plan argued, the Air
Force could always scramble fighter aircraft to protect Washington if there were a problem. On
occasions when aircraft were hijacked (and in one case when we erroneously believed a
Northwest flight had been seized), the Air Force did intercept the airliners with fighter jets. We
succeeded only in getting Secret Service the permission to continue to examine air defense
options, including the possibility of placing missile units near the White House. Most people who
heard about our efforts to create some air defense system in case terrorists tried to fly aircraft
into the Capitol, the White House, or the Pentagon simply thought we were nuts.

-- Who said the quote? Noted Bush neocon -- and Clinton counterterrorism advisor -- Richard Clarke.

One other factoid mentioned in this article:

"For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis almost 40 years ago, armed missile launchers
will be protecting the nation's capital by day's end Tuesday -- a precaution that comes amid a
heightened alert status on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks."
(this was aired on CNN, 9/11/2002)

Why would they need to install missile launchers on 9/11/02 if they were already there on 9/11/01?

Final question: do you think it's sensible to have an automatic missile launching system that requires a human override not to fire, at an installation near the approach path for Reagan National Airport?

Thank you Seeker1, common sense!

NORAD responded to Stewart's plane in the manner prescribed by procedure. I will have to get back to you with a ref. on what happened that day. I recently had a major hard drive malfunction.
Won't take long.

These are things I know from my years in the AF. So you can talk all you want about things you know nothing about.

Either you know and are or you are terribly uninformed.

Not sure which.

Just a couple of things...



With their capability to monitor developing "situations" by tapping into military and civilian radars, U.S. military commanders would have also seen Flight 175 turn abruptly south 25 minutes later ö just as they had watched on radar in October 1999 when pro golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet abruptly departed its flight path while enroute o Dallas. [CNN Oct26/1999]

In that legendary intercept, a fighter jet out of Tyndall, Florida was diverted from a training flight to escort the Lear, whose pilot had become incapacitated, trapping Stewart in the stratosphere. An F-16 was reportedly sitting off the left wingtip of Payne's pilotless business jet within 19 minutes of the FAA alert. [ABC News Oct25/99]


Didn't you say NORAD doesn't respond like this?

Sorry this is what you asserted:

Dispite popular belief, prior to 9/11/01, we did not operate as Fortress America. Our distant early warning system was designed to detect and counter threats from without, not from within.

If that is true how did NORAD respond to Stewart's plane "within"?

You might want to read this.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/25/wayward.jet.07/#3

From the website CNN.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Investigators arrive at Payne Stewart crash site
Plane went down after flying out of control for 1,500 miles
October 26, 1999
Web posted at: 12:17 p.m. EDT (1617 GMT)

Shoot down not considered by Pentagon

The Pentagon said Monday it never came close to shooting down Stewart's wayward plane in order to prevent a possible crash into a heavily populated area.

In fact, a Pentagon spokesman said, the F-16 fighter planes that monitored the jet's flight were not armed with air-to-air missiles.

Two other F-16s on "strip alert" at Fargo, South Dakota, were armed, but never took off.

Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said, "Once it was determined it was apparently going to crash in a lightly populated area, we didn't have to deal with other options, so we didn't.

End of website quote.

I wouldn't deny that U.S. military Aircraft would be involved in search and rescue or other emergency efforts. They just didn't typically go out loaded for air to air combat in the lower 48. Unless it involved some sort of training.

Alaska, yes. Soviet Bombers were always pinging the DEW (Distant Early Warning) trip line to test responses. We'd meet them with armed Fighters.

In truth, the only claim that I can make to the U.S. Air force is that of being an Air Force Brat.

About your experience in the Air Force, SickupandFed, were you in ordnance? Were you based at Holloman in Texas where you were loading Stealth Fighters to carry Hot loads doing CAP missions over Texas? I don't know. It's just an honest question.

Combat Air Patrols over a peaceful population (without any real threat) just make no sense.

9/11 changed that threat level. Today's Homeland Security has Fighters ready to go on Strip Alert.

We didn't have that (to the best of my knowledge) on 9/10/2001.

Who the hell said anything about a shoot down? You said NORAD didn't do Intercepts within CONUS. I proved they do.

As far as what I did. Not even close.

I know enough to know you're way off.

On that point, I stand corrected.

Best,

Look all I can say is, a lot of people are lying about that day. Why? I have no idea, yet. We will do ourselves a great deal of good to find out what and who.

I'm with Randi on this one for sure, there is no way our military is that bad or sloppy to let that happen. There are too many procedures that are automatic.

If they responded in 19 minutes to Stewarts's jet, how could those airliners turn off transponders and do all that and NOBODY get there?

Something stinks!

But ... may I just observe ...

... it took 76 minutes for them to reach Stewart's plane.
http://www.911myths.com/html/payne_stewart.html

Not as "speedy" as some claim.

... Stewart's plane was the only one intercepted that wasn't offshore (in the ADIZ) in a decade preceding 9/11 ... there were 67 scrambles in that time period, yes, but 66 were for offshore intercepts.
http://www.911myths.com/html/67_intercepts.html