NORAD comment

[Caper]

How exactly would you respond to this. Is it true that turning off the transpoders should not make a difference?


NORAD's job is to protect us from enemy bombers and missiles sent over our skies by foreign powers. Would those foreign powers be considerate enough to put transponders on their bombers and missiles so NORAD could locate them and shoot them down? Of course not. NORAD is expected to find unidentified flying objects without transponders....
Transponders help to filter out all identifiable aircraft for NORAD and allow them to focus on those craft that are unidentified. An aircraft flying without a transponder gets special attention. NORAD must have known when each of the transponders in the four "suicide" jets was turned off, and must have known immediately. At all times, NORAD must have known the location of each of the four planes.

let us consider the implications of the so-called hijackers/suicide pilots turning off the transponders. If the "hijackers" knew enough about transponders to shut them off, they surely must have known the aircraft could be tracked and located by conventional radar. Why, then, did the "hijackers" turn off the transponders? There's a question to ponder.
Put in other words, why did the suicide pilots want to keep the name of the airline, the flight number, the altitude, and the speed of the aircraft a secret, even though the latitude and longitude of the aircraft could not be kept secret? Turning off the transponders would not have helped the mission if NORAD was doing its job. The suicide pilots would have known NORAD would not be fooled by the trick.

Vice President Cheney did not issue orders to shoot down hostile aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, until long after the last hijacked airliner had already crashed, and that the order was never passed along to military fighter pilots searching for errant aircraft that morning.

[defaultdotxbe]

NORAD was not looking for foriegn bombers within US airspace, foriegn bombers are expected to come from (OMG!) foreign airspace

this image shows US radar coverage, the red is the joint FAA/NORAD radar

http://911review.org/brad.com/Woodybox/radar_coverage.jpg


NORAD was simply not set up to find a lone (or 4 lone) aircraft that were already well within US airspace

[nicepants]

How exactly would you respond to this. Is it true that turning off the transpoders should not make a difference?

Imagine looking at a radar screen of Class Bravo airspace. Every Aircraft in that airspace is required to have their transponder on. So for each "Blip" you see the aircraft identification, and usually the altitude (among other possible information). So instead of just a screen full of indiscriminate dots, you know what's what, where it is, how high it is, etc.

There are even websites where you can view live & archived radar data...you can see the planes and click on them to view their identification informtion, altitude, and speed.

Without a transponder, the plane is just a reflection of a radio signal...a "blip". Now add a few hundred more blips to your screen and see how hard it is to keep track of a single one.

ETA: I'm not an ATC guy, nor do I claim to be. This is based on my knowledge of ATC systems as a private pilot. I'm sure you could find better sources if necessary. Just my 0.02

[Calcas]

How exactly would you respond to this. Is it true that turning off the transpoders should not make a difference?

This thread covered all of this and more in great detail.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=85286

[beachnut]

[quote=Caper;3315619]
ATC uses the transponder to keep track of planes. If you turn off the transponder ATC lost the altitude and blip! ATC has to then bring up the primary targets to track them and they have lost the altitude information. You can still decode attitude but you need to correlate tapes; after the fact; like they did!. By turning off the transponder you disappear until ATC does something!!! They are tracking all the planes, if you turn off the transponder first ATC thinks it is a power failure, a mistake, but it can be the plane is lost as in blown up. This actually gets ATC attention! So it does not matter what the terrorist did on 9/11, they were going to be known as something at sometime; they sucked on the radio and did not take directions well! The transponder does not make a difference, you would not shoot down the plane without the transponder! Transponder junk talk is BS. The terrorist had manuals to study, anyone with just a second of training can find the transponder. The manuals would make it simple if the transponders were integrated into other instrument stack electronically. BTW, in pilot training when we messed up our transponders seem to malfunction!

As an Air Force officer, if I was flying a jet on 9/11 and knew what was going on, I have the authorization (I was paid to think for myself and make rational decsions, I need no stinking permission to do my job;) to stop the terrorist, do not need Dick, but it would be nice if the President or my boss would help with the decision! However, if I knew what flight 93 passengers knew on 9/11 and I had a plane and as I flew wing on the terrorist aircraft and spotted the terrorist(close enough to see their eyes); I would stop the terrorist if I was in a KC-135, an F-15, or even a T-38. So the shoot down order is BS, all you need is the oath of office or be a brave civilian to take actions like the passengers on flight 93. Thank you again 93, they did what no truther can do! THINK and ACT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #1 citizens… gone but not forgotten (not something Dylan Avery puts much thought into)

Just ask the doltish 9/11 truth person if the civilians on flight 93 asked permission to take out the terrorists. How can 9/11 truth be so dumb? Why does the Air Force?

[LastChild]

So does it make a real difference or not?

And if not then why did they do it?

[nicepants]

So does it make a real difference or not?

Short answer: Yes.

[GStan]

Imagine looking at a radar screen of Class Bravo airspace. Every Aircraft in that airspace is required to have their transponder on. So for each "Blip" you see the aircraft identification, and usually the altitude (among other possible information). So instead of just a screen full of indiscriminate dots, you know what's what, where it is, how high it is, etc.

There are even websites where you can view live & archived radar data...you can see the planes and click on them to view their identification informtion, altitude, and speed.

Without a transponder, the plane is just a reflection of a radio signal...a "blip". Now add a few hundred more blips to your screen and see how hard it is to keep track of a single one.

ETA: I'm not an ATC guy, nor do I claim to be. This is based on my knowledge of ATC systems as a private pilot. I'm sure you could find better sources if necessary. Just my 0.02

If all the blips can be identified when the transponders are on, what would be so confusing about tracking the four blips that specifically turned their transponders off? Why not just stay focused on the four unidentified blips?
I'm not asking from suspicion, I just don't understand where the confusion would come into play.

[defaultdotxbe]

So does it make a real difference or not?

And if not then why did they do it?
my grandmother throws salt over her shoulder if she spills some

does it make a real difference? no

then why does she do it? she thinks it makes a real difference

[nicepants]

If all the blips can be identified when the transponders are on, what would be so confusing about tracking the four blips that specifically turned their transponders off? Why not just stay focused on the four unidentified blips?
I'm not asking from suspicion, I just don't understand where the confusion would come into play.

From what I understand (someone who knows more than me, please correct me if I'm wrong)....

To view radar returns without transponders means you're looking at ALL radar reflections within the area. Including birds, clouds, ground clutter, etc...ANYTHING that the radar waves bounce off of, including other aircraft. So instead of a screen with idents, speeds & altitudes, you essentially have a screen of moving dots, because you can't view the transponder info to find the plane, you have to view the radar returns. But when you do that, you're also viewing the radar returns of every other object in the sky, because you're no longer listening for transponders, you're just looking for a reflection.

[defaultdotxbe]

If all the blips can be identified when the transponders are on, what would be so confusing about tracking the four blips that specifically turned their transponders off? Why not just stay focused on the four unidentified blips?
I'm not asking from suspicion, I just don't understand where the confusion would come into play.
there was no way to filter the blips without transponders, you could either see all the planes with transponders, or all planes in the sky (primary radar)

when on primary radar there was no transponder info, so all the blips look the same

[PhantomWolf]

So does it make a real difference or not?

And if not then why did they do it?

It makes a lot of difference. The FAA ATC uses secondary radar, in other words, the transponders, to track the aircraft, without the transponder on the plane becomes a blip without information. A sharp eyed controller can still track the position of the plane, but can get little to no detailed information from it, and that's assuming that there is primary radar, as of 2001 the US was not covered 100% by Primary radar, in fact where Flight 77 was hijacked there was no Primary Radar, turning it's transponder off lead the ATC to believe it had crashed (at that point they hadn't heard what was happening in Boston Control so didn't know about 11 and 175.)

For NORAD the situation gets even worse. They just have a lot of dots on the screen. They have to then identify which dot is which. NORADs Radar Screens are not filtered, because they're looking for things that shouldn't be there. Usually they are looking out over water and so there is little traffic, but that day they were looking at the internal state, an area that had literally thousands of planes in the airspace to choice from. Transponders allow them to sort some of it out, but when looking over the continental US they also get dots created by ground clutter, small planes and other planes that don't have transponders (not all of them do) so there are a lot of non-transponder based dots. Now add another dot to the mix, how do you determine which one it is? Remember the FAA ATC knows which dot is which, NORAD doesn't. That means that the FAA needs to be able to tell NORAD which dot is which. That would one have mean giving NORAD a specific common location and a vector from that location to the aircraft, only NORAD changed its systems to Long, Lat in the early 90's and the common location/vector system that the FAA was still using was meaningless to the NORAD ATC, they might as well have being speaking Spanish to a Samoan. That meant that the FAA had to determine a way to convert their system information into a long, lat system (they ended up doing something similar to placing a transparency grid over the screen, Cheap Shot, who was in Boston working the problem, talks about how they did it in one of his posts I believe.) At that point they were able to tell NORAD which one of the hundreds of dots was the plane they were after, that took time however and NORAD basically at that time had a policy of not launching without a target (remember that that time all the military could do in a hijacking was trail the plane, they couldn't take military action in a law enforcement situation, it's against the US Constitution.) This lead to a short delay (about 5 mins) to the launching of fighter to Flight 11 (not that they would have made it anyway as they were launching at about the same time as Flight 11 crashed and were about 15 mins away, they arrived shortly after Flight 175 hit.)

So yes it may also have made a difference on the day. Had Flight 11 not had its transponder deactivated (Flight 175 didn't, the pilot tried but merely switched its mode rather then turning it off) NORAD could probably have located it faster and the fighters might have been in a position to have stopped Flight 175. However the fact that NORAD didn't learn about Flight 175 till it was too late and there wasn't an approval to fire on a civilian airliner until after 10am, an hour later, probably wouldn't have prevented 175's attack anyway.

[GStan]

there was no way to filter the blips without transponders, you could either see all the planes with transponders, or all planes in the sky (primary radar)

when on primary radar there was no transponder info, so all the blips look the same

Default and Nice thanks for the quick response. I think I understand now. Let me restate and see if I have it right. If I am looking at a screen of planes that have their transponders on, and I can see the tag info attached to each plane; if one of those planes turns off their transponder, i lose all of the tag info AND the blip itself, not just the tag info. Now I can still find that blip (either on a different screen or a different view of the same screen), but only if I'm looking at it on the screen that has none of the transponder tags for any of the planes, just the blips. Is that roughly correct in laymen's terms?

[PhantomWolf]

there was no way to filter the blips without transponders, you could either see all the planes with transponders, or all planes in the sky (primary radar)

when on primary radar there was no transponder info, so all the blips look the same

This is exactly it, but as Nice Pants pointed out, you also get a lot of other stuff as well (flocks of birds, clouds, ground clutter, UFOs)

It's a get everything or get nothing situation you can't just ask for those four to stay on the secondary screen.

Having said that... Flight 175 didn't lose its transponder, they hijacker accidently left it on, but switched channels. The FAA were able to track it to impact. Flight 11 did switch theirs off but the FAA still tracked it on Primary Radar since they knew which blip it was, it was the communications between the FAA and NORAD and how to tell NORAD which blip was Flight 11 that was the issue. Flight 93 vanished from Secondary Radar in an area with no primary so wasn't able to be tracked by the FAA, who assumed it had crashed (this was a different ATC center to flights 11 and 175 and didn't know of the hijackings at that point, after they did learn about them they re-evaluated flight 77's condition and determined it was another possible hijacking.) I believe that Flight 93 was also followed on Primary radar by the FAA ATC, but they failed to alert NORAD until after it had crashed.

[PhantomWolf]

Default and Nice thanks for the quick response. I think I understand now. Let me restate and see if I have it right. If I am looking at a screen of planes that have their transponders on, and I can see the tag info attached to each plane; if one of those planes turns off their transponder, i lose all of the tag info AND the blip itself, not just the tag info. Now I can still find that blip (either on a different screen or a different view of the same screen), but only if I'm looking at it on the screen that has none of the transponder tags for any of the planes, just the blips. Is that roughly correct in laymen's terms?

Yes, apparently you can switch from one to the other on the same screen, but you also end up with a heap of additional blips that the radar is returning from small planes without transponders, flocks of birds, clouds, ground clutter, and other radar returning objects, and of course if there is no primary radar in that area, as in the case of Flight 77, you end up with nothing.

[LastChild]

It makes a lot of difference. The FAA ATC uses secondary radar, in other words, the transponders, to track the aircraft, without the transponder on the plane becomes a blip without information. A sharp eyed controller can still track the position of the plane, but can get little to no detailed information from it, and that's assuming that there is primary radar, as of 2001 the US was not covered 100% by Primary radar, in fact where Flight 77 was hijacked there was no Primary Radar, turning it's transponder off lead the ATC to believe it had crashed (at that point they hadn't heard what was happening in Boston Control so didn't know about 11 and 175.)

For NORAD the situation gets even worse. They just have a lot of dots on the screen. They have to then identify which dot is which. NORADs Radar Screens are not filtered, because they're looking for things that shouldn't be there. Usually they are looking out over water and so there is little traffic, but that day they were looking at the internal state, an area that had literally thousands of planes in the airspace to choice from. Transponders allow them to sort some of it out, but when looking over the continental US they also get dots created by ground clutter, small planes and other planes that don't have transponders (not all of them do) so there are a lot of non-transponder based dots. Now add another dot to the mix, how do you determine which one it is? Remember the FAA ATC knows which dot is which, NORAD doesn't. That means that the FAA needs to be able to tell NORAD which dot is which. That would one have mean giving NORAD a specific common location and a vector from that location to the aircraft, only NORAD changed its systems to Long, Lat in the early 90's and the common location/vector system that the FAA was still using was meaningless to the NORAD ATC, they might as well have being speaking Spanish to a Samoan. That meant that the FAA had to determine a way to convert their system information into a long, lat system (they ended up doing something similar to placing a transparency grid over the screen, Cheap Shot, who was in Boston working the problem, talks about how they did it in one of his posts I believe.) At that point they were able to tell NORAD which one of the hundreds of dots was the plane they were after, that took time however and NORAD basically at that time had a policy of not launching without a target (remember that that time all the military could do in a hijacking was trail the plane, they couldn't take military action in a law enforcement situation, it's against the US Constitution.) This lead to a short delay (about 5 mins) to the launching of fighter to Flight 11 (not that they would have made it anyway as they were launching at about the same time as Flight 11 crashed and were about 15 mins away, they arrived shortly after Flight 175 hit.)

So yes it may also have made a difference on the day. Had Flight 11 not had its transponder deactivated (Flight 175 didn't, the pilot tried but merely switched its mode rather then turning it off) NORAD could probably have located it faster and the fighters might have been in a position to have stopped Flight 175. However the fact that NORAD didn't learn about Flight 175 till it was too late and there wasn't an approval to fire on a civilian airliner until after 10am, an hour later, probably wouldn't have prevented 175's attack anyway.

Well I think it made a difference too. But there are some right here who will claim it didn't. To me it's like claiming you were drinking and driving, you get in an accident, but then you claim you weren't drunk. It just sounds lame.

Someone obviously thought that turning off the transponders made a difference in helping the planes to not be detected in time. According to the official version none of the planes were intercepted. But still we have those who will claim it didn't make a difference that the transponders that help track the plane were off. It’s like why the hell do they have them in the first place if they don’t make that big of a difference?

[nicepants]

It’s like why the hell do they have them in the first place if they don’t make that big of a difference?

They make a huge difference. Instead of looking at a screen full of blips, a radar operator can look at a contact and see, depending on the type of transponder:

- What aircraft it is
- What altitude that aircraft is
- The speed and heading of the aircraft

This also keeps the operator from having to sort out birds, ground clutter, etc as none of these would have transponders, they would not show up on the screen.

You don't need to be a radar operator to understand that this additional information would make keeping track of a particular aircraft MUCH easier.

[beachnut]

Well I think it made a difference too. But there are some right here who will claim it didn't. To me it's like claiming you were drinking and driving, you get in an accident, but then you claim you weren't drunk. It just sounds lame.

Someone obviously thought that turning off the transponders made a difference in helping the planes to not be detected in time. According to the official version none of the planes were intercepted. But still we have those who will claim it didn't make a difference that the transponders that help track the plane were off. It’s like why the hell do they have them in the first place if they don’t make that big of a difference?
You do not understand transponders, you never will; too bad. It could make a difference, but it seems you do not have a clue how to ask a real question. Have you used a transponder?

Yes, if 11 had a transponder on it would help a lot if. 175 was on, but it did not help since the fighters were not there already chasing 11!? If you do not understand the if, you lack knowledge and you will ask the wrong questions as usual. You have any useful questions to help you and other, even me, learn?

[nicepants]

LastChild...here is an example of what is seen WITH transponders. This is current air traffic around the Denver airport. This is similar to what someone at ATC would be looking at.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/141894783e3111c89f.gif

Now imagine a screen with no identifying info, speed info, altitude info for any of the aircraft, AND with additional blips of smaller aircraft, birds, ground clutter, etc and trying to keep track of flights.

[fezzic]

How exactly would you respond to this. Is it true that turning off the transpoders should not make a difference?

(others have probably done a better job but here's my reasoning)

Intruding aircraft are much more easily detected (and that is how NORAD's radar detection systems were oriented) and could be met by interceptors while out over the ocean. Similarly, aircraft coming from the North would have to cross into Canada and (I believe) the Canadians are also onboard with respect to early warning. When dealing with the South, there might be more problems however it is probably doubtful that anybody would be able to launch a truly damaging attack from countries in Central and South America -- the US response might be rather weighty. The exception might be Cuba however even the Cubans would know that any attack launched from Cuba would be rather minimal in effect (if someone were to station a large number of say, nuclear capable, aircraft there that NORAD would probably take notice and reinforce the forces facing that way).

The Air Traffic Control system is designed to guide and control aircraft within the US. As such, commercial aircraft that regularly expect to operate there have to (I presume) comply with FAA regs about transponders and such since the point of the transponders is to slot into the existing ATC system and try to ensure the safety of the aircraft and public.

As noted, NORAD's focus was on incoming threats in a relatively open and probably relatively non-congested airspace. The FAA's ATC focus was on controlling aircraft in a congested airspace.

What is missed in all this is that NORAD probably could have tracked, perhaps quickly, even if they lacked the assets to quickly intercept, the hijacked airliners, IF and only IF they had assembled and operated the kind of air defense setup that one might expect from, as an example, the UK during the Battle of Britain, namely where everything was tracked from the gitgo with the full requirement that each and every contact was going to be identified and tracked from takeoff to landing, even if the aid defense operators, coordinators, CIC people didn't do more than update their statuses, and this was done 7x24x365. A very expensive ongoing proposition, even wasteful under the circumstances of pre 9/11.

So IDEALLY it should not have mattered. However, since we're not dealing with hypothetical ideal situations, practically, it made a very big difference in the ability of the FAA and subsequently NORAD to intervene in any meaningful manner.

[PhantomWolf]

Well I think it made a difference too. But there are some right here who will claim it didn't. To me it's like claiming you were drinking and driving, you get in an accident, but then you claim you weren't drunk. It just sounds lame.

Someone obviously thought that turning off the transponders made a difference in helping the planes to not be detected in time. According to the official version none of the planes were intercepted. But still we have those who will claim it didn't make a difference that the transponders that help track the plane were off. It’s like why the hell do they have them in the first place if they don’t make that big of a difference?

It depends on how you look at it. If they hadn't turned off the Transponders would the attacks have been prevented? In the case of Flight 11 I'd say no, there just wasn't enough time to get planes in position, and even if they had been they legally could not have acted against the plane until it was too late anyway.

For Flight 175 possibly. Since it didn't lose its transponder and wasn't intercepted because the fighters weren't in a position to do so we can't be totally sure, though with the extra few minutes they might have made it in time. Then you have the issues of could they got into a firing position before the plane was over NY city and would they have been given permission to fire, until such time as it was even 95% apparent it was a second attack and that the first wasn't actually an accident I doubt they would have been allowed to fire, and by then I suspect it would have been too late.

Flight 77 I think would have been stopped. With its transponder on it would have been able to be tracked and there wouldn't have been the confusion because of the crash issue. The FAA likely would have reported it to NORAD faster too meaning they would have had a target to go for. The issue of the Phantom Flight 11 could still have caused issues, but they likely would have at least been in a position to take down 77, if they'd been able to get permission. With eyes on the plane that likely would have happened a bit faster.

Flight 93, I doubt it would have made a difference. NORAD didn't have enough planes to handle 4 attacks (they only had 4 alert planes and they act in pairs) and since they weren't informed until after the crash, I suspect that 93 would still have crashed as it did.

Would the overall situation be changed, I doubt it. Even if Flight 175 and 77 had been stopped the US would have been rocked by the horror of WTC 1 collapsing (and 3, 6, 5, and 7 would still be gone too.) WTC 2 would likely have suffered severe damage in the collapse of WTC 1 and been unusable for years if ever again, it may have had to be dismantled. The pentagon wouldn't have been struck, but instead there'd be the horror of the US Air force having shot down two civilian airlines over the eastern states. The attacks would have been just as effective, though the overall numbers of dead obviously far lower. In the long run, the turning off of the transponders did not really affect the outcome, just how that outcome played out.

[PhantomWolf]

Similarly, aircraft coming from the North would have to cross into Canada and (I believe) the Canadians are also onboard with respect to early warning.

NORAD is a joint US/Canada command (I'll go back to reading the rest of your post now.)

[PhantomWolf]

So IDEALLY it should not have mattered. However, since we're not dealing with hypothetical ideal situations, practically, it made a very big difference in the ability of the FAA and subsequently NORAD to intervene in any meaningful manner.

Really the main issue was the lack of communications and the abysmal procedures that were set up between the FAA and NORAD. They simply weren't set up for a multiple hijackings or attacks from aircraft inside the US.

Situations such as the Hijack co-ordinators locking themselves in a meeting to discuss Flight 11 resulting in further information on new hijackings being unable to reach them and a lengthy process to get information from the ATC to NORAD meant that the response was shoddy until people started to break procedure and deal directly from ATC to NORAD without all the intervening steps. We need to thank people like Cheap Shot who ignored the rules and just did what was obvious thus getting the systems up and running faster.

Further more the fact that NOARD changed its location systems a decade earlier and never seemed to bother alerting the FAA to that change certainly didn't help the issue. Again the ATC guys thought quick and figured out a solution, but they shouldn't have had too.

One hopes that this has all been fixed since 2001, but I wouldn't place bets on it.

[WildCat]

Really the main issue was the lack of communications and the abysmal procedures that were set up between the FAA and NORAD. They simply weren't set up for a multiple hijackings or attacks from aircraft inside the US.
Nor was there a protocol in place to shoot down airliners after they had been hijacked. Even if the first flight had been intercepted it's likely the fighters would have done nothing more than shadow it as it hit the WTC.

[PhantomWolf]

Nor was there a protocol in place to shoot down airliners after they had been hijacked. Even if the first flight had been intercepted it's likely the fighters would have done nothing more than shadow it as it hit the WTC.

Well there was a protocol, it's just that it required Presidential Authorisation to do it, which came through about 10:10am, over an hour after the first strike and after 93 has already crashed. Again there was a lack of communications. However in some ways I think that it was better than the Military shooting down any plane that they thought was suspect, that may have lead to a lot more deaths that day.

Remember the US Constitution states that the US Military cannot be involved in US law enforcement, a hijacking is a Law Enforcement issue, the military are legally barred from acting without Presidential Authority, apart from the fact that no plane had ever been hijacked and flown into a building before and thus there was no precedent.

Communications was truly the missing key of 9/11, both before and during. Unfortunately a lot of the communications channels were actually blocked by law. Legally the CIA could not give information they gathered "illegally" (i.e. unwarranted phone tapping of overseas phones) about anyone in the US to any other agency. Legally the FBI and the Justice department couldn't give anyone else information from or about Grand Jury sessions. Legally the Military was not allowed to act as or on behalf of Law Enforcement including giving them gathered intelligence. Add to that lack of communications between departments with a lack of imagination and the inherent belief in over-reaction from those writing the rules when the guys on the ground told them things, and a system that caused everyone to tip toe around in case they violated a law and congress dropped on them like a ton of bricks, and instead of the so called "greatest defences in the world" you had a right mess with holes in it you could drive a platoon of panzers. The second issue was that no one in charge noticed how bad it was.

[beachnut]

Nor was there a protocol in place to shoot down airliners after they had been hijacked. Even if the first flight had been intercepted it's likely the fighters would have done nothing more than shadow it as it hit the WTC.
If you knew as much as the passengers on flight 93 knew, you could take action. There is no need for authorization to act if you have the clue bird. It is rare to be in the position of something new and you know what to do. Passengers on flight 93 were the first with the knowledge and capability to act.

You are correct, if you intercepted 175 just before impact or 10 miles out what did you really know? What time was it confirmed 11 was hijacked and attacked the WTC? You may wonder why dumb looking pilots have a panic look on their faces and are speeding in the wrong air space. You could mess with them, I bet they would move if you came in close and sprayed them with exhaust. You may be able to keep them busy But when would you know hijackings meant death, unless you had seen the impact and tied it to 11! I have flown with pilots who are quick to figure things out, they could do it!

If the intercept had happen on 175 early, the Fighter could have toyed with the terrorist and messed up their flight path and disrupted their engines. Without firing a shot the fighters may be able to change the event.

How can you know what to do on 9/11? I base the fact an Air Force pilot could act without prior permission based on as much knowledge that flight 93 passengers had. Does that make sense. I understand the law about military use for civilian purposes (until the JAG tells me again). But I also took an oath, it was pretty wide open; no shoot down order is needed; what is needed is knowledge of what the heck is happening; flight 93 passengers had the knowledge and the means. If you had the knowledge of what 9/11 was about; at that moment you could act.

The passengers on 175 can act, if I have a fighter I can act! There is no law that forbids me think and live up to my oath as an Air Froce officer. Knowledge is the key, 93 had it, after 175 hit, a lot of people knew it was happening, they just did not know what was next.

On the first flight if you were with him you could mess with him, but why, his speed below 10,000 might get you upset, his low altitude high speed towards the city would be something you may decide was bad and mess with him. But you are right, you might be 1 mile back, shadowing! But then 175 would be history if you got to him early.

[DGM]

Yes, apparently you can switch from one to the other on the same screen, but you also end up with a heap of additional blips that the radar is returning from small planes without transponders, flocks of birds, clouds, ground clutter, and other radar returning objects, and of course if there is no primary radar in that area, as in the case of Flight 77, you end up with nothing.
It's my understanding that if the transponder is turned off the tag does not disappear. The tag changes color and continues on the projected path. I believe this is to let the ATC know there is a problem and give them an idea of where to look. The issue is if the plane turns (like they did) the projected path stays the same.

[PhantomWolf]

It's my understanding that if the transponder is turned off the tag does not disappear. The tag changes color and continues on the projected path. I believe this is to let the ATC know there is a problem and give them an idea of where to look. The issue is if the plane turns (like they did) the projected path stays the same.

I was meaning that if the area wasn't covered by primary radar that attempting to switch to it gave you nothingm hence why there was no way to just switch to primary and pick up 77 like they did with 11 and 93.

[DGM]

I was meaning that if the area wasn't covered by primary radar that attempting to switch to it gave you nothingm hence why there was no way to just switch to primary and pick up 77 like they did with 11 and 93.
I agree. I mentioned this because I remember hearing ATC lost some time looking in the wrong place because the planes turned away from the projected path.

I'd like to see one of our ATC knowledgeable guys confirm whether the "tag" disappears or not. I'm not 100% positive.

[PhantomWolf]

I agree. I mentioned this because I remember hearing ATC lost some time looking in the wrong place because the planes turned away from the projected path.

I'd like to see one of our ATC knowledgeable guys confirm whether the "tag" disappears or not. I'm not 100% positive.

Ahhh, I think I know what you're onto here.

After Cleveland (?) ATC learned that 11 and 175 had been hijacked, they decided to re-evaluate the 77 is down decision and so started tracing it's flight path to see if they could find a blip that correspond to it. Of course it had changed direction so they didn't see it along its old flight path and it wasn't found until it entered Washington controlled airspace.

It would seem that different groups in ATC use different systems, for instance Washington spotted 77 without a transponder, so they would need to be using a system that marks all returns, not unlikely since they are dealing with all planes in the sky, not just large commercial flights so they need to be able to see those without tansponders as well as those with them. ATC from the main centers such as Boston and Cleveland seem to have the Primary /Secondary configuration. Again not unlikely since they are dealing only with high attitude commercial traffic who should all have transponders.

It'd certainly be nice if Cheap Shot or one of our other ATC posters would confirm of expand in this.

[A-Train]

Remember the US Constitution states that the US Military cannot be involved in US law enforcement, a hijacking is a Law Enforcement issue, the military are legally barred from acting without Presidential Authority, apart from the fact that no plane had ever been hijacked and flown into a building before and thus there was no precedent.


I had to rub my eyes when I read this. Like everything else you've said on this thread, PhantomWolf, this is old garbage that has been debunked so thoroughly and so long ago that it's hard to believe anyone could seriously bring it up today.

The reality is that the Posse Comitatus only states that the military cannot arrest people. It does not prohibit the military from cooperating with civilian law enforcement. The entire procedure for intercepting aircraft is predicated on the civilian ATC cooperating with NORAD according to long standing and well established procedures.

Your whole idea was debunked by none other than 9/11 Commissioner Jaime Gorelick, in a confrontation with Gen. Myers.

"Let me just interrupt, when I was general counsel of the Defense Department, I repeatedly advised, and I believe others have advised that the Posse Comitatus says, you can't arrest people. It doesn't mean that the military has no authority, obligation, or ability to defend the United States from attacks that happen to happen in the domestic United States."
-9/11 Commissioner Jaime Gorelick

[Reheat]

What a surprise! You actually read some of the Commission Report. Did you learn what "out of touch" idiotic ideas you possess?

[PhantomWolf]

I had to rub my eyes when I read this. Like everything else you've said on this thread, PhantomWolf, this is old garbage that has been debunked so thoroughly and so long ago that it's hard to believe anyone could seriously bring it up today.

The reality is that the Posse Comitatus only states that the military cannot arrest people. It does not prohibit the military from cooperating with civilian law enforcement. The entire procedure for intercepting aircraft is predicated on the civilian ATC cooperating with NORAD according to long standing and well established procedures.

Your whole idea was debunked by none other than 9/11 Commissioner Jaime Gorelick, in a confrontation with Gen. Myers.

The issue is that Flight 11 was not an attack on the US until it hit the WTC, as such the US military had not authorisation to deal with it in any manner other than tailing. Their taking action against Flight 11 would not have been in cooperation with Law Enforcement, but an independant action. By the way, it is not just arrest they are not allowed to do, but "to execute the laws" which is shown to be "direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity." Shooting down a hijacked airline would have a) been illegal without authoriastion, and b) lead to a moral outrage from the US public unless it could be proved without a doubt that it had been neceassary.

The FAA was following its procedures for getting NORAD to intercept a Civilian aircraft (BTW, something that while those procedures were in place had not been done in the previous decade, and no Payne Stewart's plane was not intercepted by NORAD) those procedures would have taken far too long had they not been short curcuited by the people on the ground going directly to NORAD and alerting them rather then going through the correct channels.

[A-Train]

That means that the FAA needs to be able to tell NORAD which dot is which. That would one have mean giving NORAD a specific common location and a vector from that location to the aircraft, only NORAD changed its systems to Long, Lat in the early 90's and the common location/vector system that the FAA was still using was meaningless to the NORAD ATC, they might as well have being speaking Spanish to a Samoan. That meant that the FAA had to determine a way to convert their system information into a long, lat system (they ended up doing something similar to placing a transparency grid over the screen, Cheap Shot, who was in Boston working the problem, talks about how they did it in one of his posts I believe.) At that point they were able to tell NORAD which one of the hundreds of dots was the plane they were after, that took time however and NORAD basically at that time had a policy of not launching without a target (remember that that time all the military could do in a hijacking was trail the plane, they couldn't take military action in a law enforcement situation, it's against the US Constitution.) This lead to a short delay (about 5 mins) to the launching of fighter to Flight 11 (not that they would have made it anyway as they were launching at about the same time as Flight 11 crashed and were about 15 mins away, they arrived shortly after Flight 175 hit.)

I don't mean to be rude, but what qualifies you to be commenting on the issues involving NORAD and the FAA? Do you have any idea how foolish you have made yourself look in the above post-- and by extension, how foolish you make JREF itself look?

Your post is so full of absurdities that it's hard to know where to begin in correcting it. For starters, where does it say anywhere that NORAD has to know where a suspicious aircraft is before it can launch its fighters? Why would NORAD controllers need to have the target on their scopes if the FAA controllers at Boston Center have it on theirs? Boston Center is perfectly capable of relaying the location to NEADS-- that's why they have a military liaison, in this case it was our very own Cheap Shot, who was continuously telling NEADS exactly where AAL11 was as it flew toward Manhattan.

And why would anyone have to convert anything to lat/longs? If AAL11 is 35 miles north of JFK, why would NEADS need lat/longs? Are we supposed to believe our military doesn't know where JFK is, or how long 35 miles is?

Do you really think that the FAA and NORAD are not going to be able to communicate with each other on such a simple matter? The whole air defense apparatus is predicated on cooperation between the FAA and NORAD. FAA controllers are trained to provide vectors to NORAD fighters for the purpose of intercepting suspect airplanes. If these two entities can't communicate with each other, what's the point of having a military liaison stationed in every ATC center?

And where's your evidence that miscommunication between FAA controllers and NEADS is what resulted in the 5-6 minute delay in scrambling the jets from Otis? NEADS had everything they needed to know: they knew the plane was hijacked; they knew exactly where it was and where it was headed, and even its approximate speed. Still, someone chose to wait six minutes longer before finally ordering the launch. And until someone explains the reason for this delay and other anomalies on 9/11, knowledgeable observers will continue to suspect a deliberate slowdown that was engineered by someone within NEADS to allow the hijacked planes to hit their targets.

Listen, PWolf, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but you are out of your league. Your arguments are all stale Popular Mechanics stuff that has been debunked years ago by David Ray Griffin and others. You're dreadfully behind the power curve. I'd like to politely ask you to please excuse yourself from the remainder of this thread.

[PhantomWolf]

Listen, PWolf, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but you are out of your league. Your arguments are all stale Popular Mechanics stuff that has been debunked years ago by David Ray Griffin and others. You're dreadfully behind the power curve. I'd like to politely ask you to please excuse yourself from the remainder of this thread.

Did you even bother reading any of Cheap Shot's postings here? You claim my arguments are old and debunked, and yet where I got them was not Popular Mechanics as you claim but rather right from the horse's mouth, Cheap Shot. Go and re-read his posts, or better yet the Interview he did with Ref, but then why should you, you never listened to him the entire time he was telling you that you were wrong, even though he was there on the time and knew what they did, no you'd rather believe DRG who was no where near Boston. Carry on in your dreamworld A-Train, perhaps you'll figure out how to get to the front nose wheel from the cockpit of a 757 one day.

[A-Train]

Did you even bother reading any of Cheap Shot's postings here? You claim my arguments are old and debunked, and yet where I got them was not Popular Mechanics as you claim but rather right from the horse's mouth, Cheap Shot. Go and re-read his posts, or better yet the Interview he did with Ref, but then why should you, you never listened to him the entire time he was telling you that you were wrong, even though he was there on the time and knew what they did, no you'd rather believe DRG who was no where near Boston. Carry on in your dreamworld A-Train, perhaps you'll figure out how to get to the front nose wheel from the cockpit of a 757 one day.

I actually have read Cheap Shot's posts-- and his interview with ref-- very closely. I sometimes think I'm the only one on this board who actually understands most of what he was saying.

I don't remember CS ever telling me I was wrong. Mostly our exchanges went like this: CS would go into detail about what he saw and did on 9/11. Then he would express his opinions that there was no stand-down, that the Langley fighters were scrambled based on phantom AAL11, etc. Then I would point out to him that whatever his experiences on that day, he is in no position to know what went on within NEADS, and that thus his conclusions are no more valid than the opinions of the guy on the next bar stool. To which he launch into yet another snow job, and on and on it would go......

Cheap Shot is an FAA guy. If there was a stand-down, it was engineered within NEADS, and had nothing to do with civilian ATC. Cheap Shot has a lot of interesting things to say, but in the end he believes in the official story for the same emotional reasons as the rest of you-- because he wants to believe it, not because he knows it is true.

[Reheat]

I don't mean to be rude, but what qualifies you to be commenting on the issues involving NORAD and the FAA? Do you have any idea how foolish you have made yourself look in the above post-- and by extension, how foolish you make JREF itself look?

I do mean to be rude! PhantomWolf is correct. Coincidently are you not thinking of the way you make even the troofers look silly with your out of touch idiotic ideas?

Your post is so full of absurdities that it's hard to know where to begin in correcting it. For starters, where does it say anywhere that NORAD has to know where a suspicious aircraft is before it can launch its fighters?

It was general policy prior to 9/11. You'd know that too, if you didn't get your stupid ideas from DRG and Robin Hordon.

Why would NORAD controllers need to have the target on their scopes if the FAA controllers at Boston Center have it on theirs? Boston Center is perfectly capable of relaying the location to NEADS-- that's why they have a military liaison, in this case it was our very own Cheap Shot, who was continuously telling NEADS exactly where AAL11 was as it flew toward Manhattan.

Can't you read either?

And why would anyone have to convert anything to lat/longs? If AAL11 is 35 miles north of JFK, why would NEADS need lat/longs? Are we supposed to believe our military doesn't know where JFK is, or how long 35 miles is?

If you read something besides troofer mythology, you'd know the correct answer to this.

Do you really think that the FAA and NORAD are not going to be able to communicate with each other on such a simple matter? The whole air defense apparatus is predicated on cooperation between the FAA and NORAD. FAA controllers are trained to provide vectors to NORAD fighters for the purpose of intercepting suspect airplanes. If these two entities can't communicate with each other, what's the point of having a military liaison stationed in every ATC center?

Please provide evidence of this training.

Troofer BS

You want him to leave just like you wanted me to leave a few months back. In reality you've worried about being embarrassed and slam dunked for the umpteenth time here, that's all.

Until you become a Moderator here, get off this kick of asking people to leave just because you don't like what they have to say. PhantomWolf is not even an American and he knows infinitely more about the system than you do.

[A-Train]

In June 2001 a new order or instruction had come out from the Joint Chiefs, the CJCSI 3610.01A. Some skeptics think that controllers or lower level management people should have been aware of this instruction. The FAA will take an instruction like this and eventually incorporate this into the document. I didn’t know about this instruction until I was actually interviewed by the Justice Department.

The Hijack coordinator was supposed to notify the National Military Command Center (NMCC), I believe they are located at the Pentagon. The NMCC would notify NORAD, NORAD would notify one of three Air Defense Control Facilities (ADCF’s), in our case Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADs). The ADCF would call the alert site, in our case Otis ANGB (FMH).

What I knew on 9-11 was that I could call NEADS and get them to launch fighters right away. The ADCF’s had authority to launch interceptors, with coordination to or from NORAD. They didn’t necessarily have to wait for a clearance from NORAD. They could launch on their own and then tell NORAD, hey we are launching fighters for an escort mission of a hijacked aircraft. Why they waited for the okay from NORAD I don’t know it could have been a change on their end. But on 9-11 I believe they could have been launched without NORADS blessing. Of course that’s my interpretation of FAAO 7610.4J. Appendix 16.


-Cheap Shot

Am I the only one who realizes that it is Cheap Shot himself who debunks most of the popular arguments explaining why there were no intercepts of the planes on 9/11?

[Reheat]

I actually have read Cheap Shot's posts-- and his interview with ref-- very closely. I sometimes think I'm the only one on this board who actually understands most of what he was saying.

Every time you post you confirm you don't have a clue.


I don't remember CS ever telling me I was wrong.

Link this exchange you refer to. You're dreaming. Even if he didn't tell you that you were wrong, it's because he couldn't be bothered with your nonsense.


If there was a stand-down,

What? Did you just use the word "if"? Did you commensurate with DRG prior to writing this word "if"?

[A-Train]

It was general policy prior to 9/11. You'd know that too, if you didn't get your stupid ideas from DRG and Robin Hordon.

Please refer to my above posting of Cheap Shot's comments, especially the last paragraph.

Then, open mouth, insert foot.

[Reheat]

Am I the only one who realizes that it is Cheap Shot himself who debunks most of the popular arguments explaining why there were no intercepts of the planes on 9/11?

You might explain what this has to do with the issue under discussion. Are we suppose to guess?

[Reheat]

Please refer to my above posting of Cheap Shot's comments, especially the last paragraph.

Then, open mouth, insert foot.

How 'bout you explain to all of your troofer friends who might read this thread just how this relates to what PW told you?

Be careful now, everyone's watching.

[Reheat]

While you're dreaming up more of your junk, I'll teach you something. I know it will fall on deaf ears, but I'll say it anyway.

The JCS writes directives presuming that folks who act on and implement those directives have some "common sense". You have none and that's why you don't understand them.

[Reheat]

You'll be OK, A-Train. Your posterior orifice will heal eventually. There's always another day, particularly if you gain some common sense.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/1840746c1f10359a41.gif (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=7720)

[PhantomWolf]

And where's your evidence that miscommunication between FAA controllers and NEADS is what resulted in the 5-6 minute delay in scrambling the jets from Otis? NEADS had everything they needed to know: they knew the plane was hijacked; they knew exactly where it was and where it was headed, and even its approximate speed. Still, someone chose to wait six minutes longer before finally ordering the launch. And until someone explains the reason for this delay and other anomalies on 9/11, knowledgeable observers will continue to suspect a deliberate slowdown that was engineered by someone within NEADS to allow the hijacked planes to hit their targets.

I'll note that going back I was incorrect in a couple of details, even after NORAD was given the Long Lat they still had trouble finding Flight 11, and that NEADS wasn't contacted for help in taking down the plane, Cheap Shot states that they were initially contacted to get an altitude since Boston though 11 was landing. Here's what Cheap Shot had to say in the matter. Since his last post was 29th Dec I'm sure that he can correct anything I get wrong.

I've mixed up the order of his posts to try and have some sort of flow to them. Underlining and bolding is mine, I have left the spelling unchanged.

I came in that morning to work at 8:30 AM, as soon as I walked through the door I was approached and told that a Hijack was going on, I went up stairs to my desk first before going on the floor. Most Hiajcks up to 9/11 were very boring, and a lot of the "brown nosers" like to stand around and just get in the way. There is really nothing you can do but try get fighters up there to watch and sterilize there frequency. Then you watch until they land.

When I got to my desk, I got a phone call from Dan Bueno the TMU Supervisor, he told me to come down and help at the military desk, probably around 8:32 was the call. I asked him if he had called NEADS to launch the fighters and he sadi he had called Otis, but they couldn't launch unless the call came from the scramble circuit. I told him he was supposed to call NEADS, so he had Joe Cooper make the call. I got to the floor around 8:35 or 8:36. I asked Joe if he had given them the location, and he said no. So I called NEADS back and that was the beggining of a very long day.

the aircraft was at 600 knots grounding that morning, and may have been up to 620. when he was about 50 NM out the aircraft began slowing dramatically. When he reached the city he was about 320, we had figured the aircraft had descended, and at that time we were assuming the aircraft was going to land not crash. One of the original intents to call NEADS was that the aircraft was hijacked but to also get a confirmation on the aircrafts altitude. We knew that NEADS had height finding, however we didn't know the accuracy at that time, not sure if I can say what that is, so I won't. But we called for the altitude with this aircraft flying into one fo the busiest corridors in the world and an unknown altitude.

Orignally we didn't even think that AAL11 hit the tower, we thought it landed at JFK. My original reason for calling NEADS wasn't so much for the escort that was required under the FAA Order 7610.4, but was to try and get an altitude on AAL11. Since they never could find AAL11 that became fruitless. My concern was we had an aircraft that was hijacked that was probably going to land at JFK, once we saw him slow down, and he was going to descend into probably the busiest air traffic coorridor in the world with out knowing the aircrafts altitude. The military and the FAA share the same site, but the military has a triangulation feed that gives them an altitude readout. I won't go into what the paramters are because I am not sure of the classification, but that was the one of the original intents, they couldn't find the target so it didn't matter any way.

A-Train. Sorry to disappoint you, but that was an exact quote of Cheap Shot. I have been in a very detailed exchange with him. Here is another one from him, not me:

About 8 years prior to 9-11 the military had begun dropping some of the common reference points so there were not as many. By 9-11 they were not using common reference points any longer but they were using Latitude/Longitudes. We didn’t know this on 9-11. Realizing this after about 5 minutes a fruitlessness, I had Joe Copper sit directly at the radar and slew over AAL11 exactly when I asked for it to give them and exact lat/long. This was when the aircraft was about 30 Nm north of JFK. Joe gave me the Lat/Longs and I read them directly to NEADS. They still couldn’t find the aircraft. This was very frustrating on our part. The fighters wouldn’t launch without an identified target. On the FAA side of the house in order to get a lat/long, is a three step process, so what method worked bet for the military didn’t work well for us.

Coordinates were issued at least twice, around Alabny or at 20 South of Albany.

up until 9-11 controllers never provided radar vectors for interceptors unless it was requested by them. Prior to 9-11 99% of all intercepts were based on targets that NEADS saw, so they had location, they would request scramble then launch.

On the FAA side of the house, if you have good primary radar you can track the aircraft fairly well. It is a pain because the data block has a hard time staying corelated with the target. On a joint FAA site the FAA turns down the ground clutter, another words we don't want to see stuff that we interpret moving slower than 30 knots (I don't know the exact parameters). On the military side they want to see everything (Lets say 10 knots). This increases the targets immensely especially over populated areas where the radar interprets buildings as moving targets. Albany, NY being one of these types of places. The military radar portion was designed this way so it could basically see a target on the horizon, where being out over the ocean there is hardly any ground clutter. Trying to find AAL11 was evidentlly impossible for them to find even with the exact coordinates. There was just to much clutter. They couldn't track what they couldn't find.

NEADS was given the exact Lat/Long of AAL11 when the aircraft was grounding over 600 Knots. Why they didn't see it is beyond me. If someone wants to investigate something that is where they should start. I beleive it was a training issue, and they either didn't scale down there range or they were not filtering there targets properly. They were using the exact same radar the FAA was using at that time.

The fighters were delayed because they didn't see the target. They normally will not launch unless they have the target ID'd.

Just some additional infor those that are interested....

It was very frustrating not being able to get the fighters up, they were delayed at the end of the runway. Awaiting orders. Witng for a Z-Point. Which they never got. I knew they wouldn't get off in time

They have a preset launch pattern, that they fly unless instructed otherwise. As in other posts they normally won't dpeart without a target

Yes, the fighters were cleared to Battle Stations where they waited, it has been reported that they were waiting for a clearance from the FAA. Scrambles don't require a clearance, they just go, the FAA just gets a heads up that they are coming. They also won't normally launch on any target without knowing where it is, that is probably why they were cleared to battle stations. I used to think that battle stations was at the end of the runway, but I learned it was in the cockpit hot and ready to go. With out a target they were not going to launch Numerous other calls were made to NEADS and to Otis Tower asking when they were getting off. The answer was always soon, this went on for a bout 6 to 8 minutes. They eventually launched.

NEADS fighters were not officially notified by the FAA, until 8:36 AM. This did give them sometime, but as in my previous posts, they won't normally launch without a target or a "Z" Point, I heard that "Z" point somewhere else. With only two sets of assets one at Otis and one at Langley they won't launch, fuel is very critical for fighter planes.

[PhantomWolf]

I don't remember CS ever telling me I was wrong.

Since I have just gone through most of his 129 posts here would you like me to link you to all the time he does?

Here's a few to get you started...

Don't get to comfortable though A-Train, your off on a lot of other stuff.

You my friend are a lost cause, and if the truth bit you on your backside, you would never know it.

[gumboot]

How exactly would you respond to this. Is it true that turning off the transpoders should not make a difference?


The entire point is a strawman. And shows a total lack of understanding of how the system worked.

The transponder is interrogated by the FAA's Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System (ATCRBS) which is their primary method of tracking aircraft. The turning off of the transponder removes the aircraft from the ATCRBS, forcing the FAA to resort to their Primary Radar System which operates by detecting a radio wave reflected off the physical hull of the aircraft. This is problematic for several reasons:
1) changeover to primary radar from ATCRBS requires the ATC to activate it by flicking a switch, and then picking up the lost contact amongst whatever radar chatter is also added to their screen (clouds, non-transponder traffic, etc).
2) Primary radar coverage is not total, and if the aircraft's transponder is turned off in an area without primary coverage (such as happened with AA77) there is no way for the FAA to locate it.
3) Primary radar does not provide vital information such as altitude and the flight number (collectively, flight labeling).
4) Due to a lack of flight labeling, the tracking of the flight, and especially handover to other air sectors, requires extreme care and focus to ensure the contact is not lost. This drains vital manpower and concentration away from managing the other 4,000 airliners that were airborne at the time.

NORAD does not track aircraft in the United States, and does not use the ATCRBS. NORAD does not control or have any authority over US airspace. During a peacetime incident NORAD is entirely reliant on the FAA providing them with timely and accurate information about the target aircraft.

Note, it is important not to confuse domestic airspace with the "buffer" off the US coastline called the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The ADIZ is monitored by NORAD and there are strict requirements for flights passaging through the ADIZ, which if not met may result in a rapid and well-practised military response. None of the four flights hijacked on 9/11 approached or entered the ADIZ.

During a time of war or crisis (such as an attack from Russian Bombers) the commander of NORAD has the authority to declare an Air Defense Emergency (one of only two "EMERGCONs" or "Emergency Conditions") and order the grounding of all commercial aircraft before implementing Security Control of Air Traffic And Navigation Aids (SCATANA).

SCATANA deactivates the entire US air navigation system and transfers control of all air monitoring assets to NORAD. NORAD, meanwhile, deploy their own much more sophisticated and combat-specific radar system, which is air-based and involves assets such as the Boeing E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) platform. These aircraft provide a much more accurate 3D map of the battlefield, and coordinate friendly aircraft in their actions against any threats.

The timeline for this changeover is several hours, assuming an elevated Defense Condition (DEFCON) due to international tension in the days/weeks preceding the attack. (Even total surprise attacks such as Peal Harbor happen in a highly agitated political environment in which an attack is considered likely at some point in the future).

The system, as it stood, was wholly unsuited in every way for stopping four simultaneously hijacked commercial American airliners flying domestic air routes and crashing into buildings within 41 minutes of hostile take-over occurring.

-Gumboot

[gumboot]

And where's your evidence that miscommunication between FAA controllers and NEADS is what resulted in the 5-6 minute delay in scrambling the jets from Otis? NEADS had everything they needed to know: they knew the plane was hijacked; they knew exactly where it was and where it was headed, and even its approximate speed. Still, someone chose to wait six minutes longer before finally ordering the launch. And until someone explains the reason for this delay and other anomalies on 9/11, knowledgeable observers will continue to suspect a deliberate slowdown that was engineered by someone within NEADS to allow the hijacked planes to hit their targets.


Despite what CheapShot felt the situation was, he does get one detail wrong. NEADS did not have authority to scramble fighters off their own back. Scramble of interceptors was only permissible after receipt of an authenticate scramble order from the National Military Command Centre (NMCC).

In accordance with US law and military standing orders regarding the use of military assets in support of civilian agencies, the NMCC were only permitted to order an intercept on receipt of an official scramble request from the Hijack Coordinator at FAA Headquarters in Washington DC. This request was never made.

There was not a single person in the Boston ARTCC with the authority to request military assistance.

The only exception to these long-standing and clearly established regulations is that the commander of NORAD has the authority to declare an Air Defense Emergency and take control of all US airspace. SCATANA was declare at 1100hrs on 9/11.

General Eberhart, who declared the ADE, explains why he waited before declaring it (my bolding):

EBERHART: SCATANA is a procedure that, as you say, allows us to take control of the air space. It's a procedure that was designed, again, to counter the Soviet Union and their long-range bombers. It's a procedure that if I had tried, and as the people approached me with, "Declare SCATANA," the problem was that we could not control the air space that day with the radars we had and all the aircraft that were airborne, 4,000 to 5,000 airplanes airborne.

So if I suddenly, "We've got it, we will control the air space," we would have had worse problems than we had that morning, because I cannot provide traffic deconfliction like the FAA has.

What mine is designed to do is we see a bomber coming from a long range, we tell everybody to get the aircraft down safely, then nothing flies and we control the air space. We are prepared to do that. But we're not prepared suddenly to take control of the air space and say, "We have it," because now we're talking -- in terms of safety and security of air travel, we're talking about a bad situation getting worse.

The other thing -- and I have the authority to do that. But I have the authority to do it against an external threat.

The second thing that's very important to note, there are procedures in SCATANA that are designed -- designed -- to counter long-range bombers.

EBERHART: For example, we're supposed to turn off all the navigational aids. That morning, the last thing we wanted to do was turn off all the navigational aids. You turn them off so that the enemy bombers can't use them. But we don't want to turn them off so that the airplanes can't land safely. We don't want to turn them off so that law enforcement and Flight For Life can't fly.

So what we did -- and you said we executed it, but I think it's very important that we note that when we executed it, we executed a modified SCATANA and that's what I told them is, "I will execute SCATANA once you have a modified SCATANA that clearly delineates the lines in the road and doesn't cause a bad situation from getting worse."

So our SCATANA said, "Leave the nav aids on." Our SCATANA said, "FAA, you still control the traffic that's flying." Our SCATANA said, "Law enforcement and Flight For Life can continue to fly." We don't want to ground them during this terrible tragedy. And then procedures for getting waivers to fly.

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49429-2004Jun17_5.html)

-Gumboot

[A-Train]

The entire point is a strawman. And shows a total lack of understanding of how the system worked.

4) Due to a lack of flight labeling, the tracking of the flight, and especially handover to other air sectors, requires extreme care and focus to ensure the contact is not lost. This drains vital manpower and concentration away from managing the other 4,000 airliners that were airborne at the time.

Now it is you displaying a total lack of understanding of how the system worked.

Just how much "vital manpower" do you think was drained away from the ATC system to watch AAL11's primary fly to its target? The answer is almost none. Yes, maybe a handful of controllers helped watch this target, mostly because it was such an unusual and urgent situation. But the idea that it was a huge burden on ATC resources to track the primary targets on these four planes is ridiculous. Remember, we are talking about four separate targets that were being tracked, at various times, by personnel in at least four different ATC centers. Of course, the AAL77 primary re-emerged after the first two planes had already crashed, and at a different facility (Washington Center) to boot. UAL93's transponder was not turned off until all three other planes had crashed, and of course was also at another facilty (Cleveland Center) as well.

Your attempt to explain the failure of the air defense system as being caused by an ATC system overwhelmed with trying to track four primary targets is a joke. You are either woefully uninformed, or are trying to construct a smokescreen.




NORAD does not track aircraft in the United States, and does not use the ATCRBS. NORAD does not control or have any authority over US airspace. During a peacetime incident NORAD is entirely reliant on the FAA providing them with timely and accurate information about the target aircraft.

Note, it is important not to confuse domestic airspace with the "buffer" off the US coastline called the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The ADIZ is monitored by NORAD and there are strict requirements for flights passaging through the ADIZ, which if not met may result in a rapid and well-practised military response. None of the four flights hijacked on 9/11 approached or entered the ADIZ.

During a time of war or crisis (such as an attack from Russian Bombers) the commander of NORAD has the authority to declare an Air Defense Emergency (one of only two "EMERGCONs" or "Emergency Conditions") and order the grounding of all commercial aircraft before implementing Security Control of Air Traffic And Navigation Aids (SCATANA).

SCATANA deactivates the entire US air navigation system and transfers control of all air monitoring assets to NORAD. NORAD, meanwhile, deploy their own much more sophisticated and combat-specific radar system, which is air-based and involves assets such as the Boeing E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) platform. These aircraft provide a much more accurate 3D map of the battlefield, and coordinate friendly aircraft in their actions against any threats.

The timeline for this changeover is several hours, assuming an elevated Defense Condition (DEFCON) due to international tension in the days/weeks preceding the attack. (Even total surprise attacks such as Peal Harbor happen in a highly agitated political environment in which an attack is considered likely at some point in the future).

A very nice lecture about how NORAD and ATC work. But what does any of this have to do with 9/11? Absolutely nothing. You are trying to impress us with your detailed knowledge of minutae, but you seem to have no idea how it applies to what actually happened on 9/11.


The system, as it stood, was wholly unsuited in every way for stopping four simultaneously hijacked commercial American airliners flying domestic air routes and crashing into buildings within 41 minutes of hostile take-over occurring.

Actually, the system was set up quite well. The FAA identified the hijackings and notified NORAD promptly. The fighters were ready to go, but for some mysterious reason, were not scrambled until it was too late.

By the way, the hijackings were not simultaneous at all, as I noted above. Can you show me how, for example, any one of the hijackings had a detrimental effect on the efforts to respond to another one?

[A-Train]

Despite what CheapShot felt the situation was, he does get one detail wrong. NEADS did not have authority to scramble fighters off their own back. Scramble of interceptors was only permissible after receipt of an authenticate scramble order from the National Military Command Centre (NMCC).

In accordance with US law and military standing orders regarding the use of military assets in support of civilian agencies, the NMCC were only permitted to order an intercept on receipt of an official scramble request from the Hijack Coordinator at FAA Headquarters in Washington DC. This request was never made.

No, Cheap Shot did not get that detail wrong. I think the military liaison at Boston Center understands the situation better than a filmmaker in New Zealand. NEADS did indeed have authority to scramble fighters on their own.

Think about it in common sense terms. Do you really think, with America under aerial attack, with not a second to spare, that the fighter jets needed to defend the country are going to have to sit and wait for some general on a golf course in Florida to answer his cell phone?

"The NMCC is the focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval." [Emphasis added]

-JCS memo "Aircraft Piracy and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects"reference d refers to JCS Directive 3025.15, which says:

"The DoD Components that receive verbal requests from civil authorities for support in an exigent emergency may initiate informal planning and, if required, immediately respond."So NEADS was fully authorized to scramble jets immediately in response to this "exigent emergency," and the idea that they needed to wait for authorization from the NMCC or anyone else is yet another smoke screen.

[MaGZ]

[quote=Caper;3315619]
ATC uses the transponder to keep track of planes. If you turn off the transponder ATC lost the altitude and blip! ATC has to then bring up the primary targets to track them and they have lost the altitude information. You can still decode attitude but you need to correlate tapes; after the fact; like they did!. By turning off the transponder you disappear until ATC does something!!! They are tracking all the planes, if you turn off the transponder first ATC thinks it is a power failure, a mistake, but it can be the plane is lost as in blown up. This actually gets ATC attention! So it does not matter what the terrorist did on 9/11, they were going to be known as something at sometime; they sucked on the radio and did not take directions well! The transponder does not make a difference, you would not shoot down the plane without the transponder! Transponder junk talk is BS. The terrorist had manuals to study, anyone with just a second of training can find the transponder. The manuals would make it simple if the transponders were integrated into other instrument stack electronically. BTW, in pilot training when we messed up our transponders seem to malfunction!

As an Air Force officer, if I was flying a jet on 9/11 and knew what was going on, I have the authorization (I was paid to think for myself and make rational decsions, I need no stinking permission to do my job;) to stop the terrorist, do not need Dick, but it would be nice if the President or my boss would help with the decision! However, if I knew what flight 93 passengers knew on 9/11 and I had a plane and as I flew wing on the terrorist aircraft and spotted the terrorist(close enough to see their eyes); I would stop the terrorist if I was in a KC-135, an F-15, or even a T-38. So the shoot down order is BS, all you need is the oath of office or be a brave civilian to take actions like the passengers on flight 93. Thank you again 93, they did what no truther can do! THINK and ACT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #1 citizens… gone but not forgotten (not something Dylan Avery puts much thought into)

Just ask the doltish 9/11 truth person if the civilians on flight 93 asked permission to take out the terrorists. How can 9/11 truth be so dumb? Why does the Air Force?

I commend you for your ability to think and act on you own if you were in the air on 9/11. Why do you think the fighters from Langley or some other air base did not do that, think and act on their own? I still believe Flight 93 was shot-down on 9/11 and the passengers had nothing to do with bring that plane down.

[MaGZ]

It makes a lot of difference. The FAA ATC uses secondary radar, in other words, the transponders, to track the aircraft, without the transponder on the plane becomes a blip without information. A sharp eyed controller can still track the position of the plane, but can get little to no detailed information from it, and that's assuming that there is primary radar, as of 2001 the US was not covered 100% by Primary radar, in fact where Flight 77 was hijacked there was no Primary Radar, turning it's transponder off lead the ATC to believe it had crashed (at that point they hadn't heard what was happening in Boston Control so didn't know about 11 and 175.)

For NORAD the situation gets even worse. They just have a lot of dots on the screen. They have to then identify which dot is which. NORADs Radar Screens are not filtered, because they're looking for things that shouldn't be there. Usually they are looking out over water and so there is little traffic, but that day they were looking at the internal state, an area that had literally thousands of planes in the airspace to choice from. Transponders allow them to sort some of it out, but when looking over the continental US they also get dots created by ground clutter, small planes and other planes that don't have transponders (not all of them do) so there are a lot of non-transponder based dots. Now add another dot to the mix, how do you determine which one it is? Remember the FAA ATC knows which dot is which, NORAD doesn't. That means that the FAA needs to be able to tell NORAD which dot is which. That would one have mean giving NORAD a specific common location and a vector from that location to the aircraft, only NORAD changed its systems to Long, Lat in the early 90's and the common location/vector system that the FAA was still using was meaningless to the NORAD ATC, they might as well have being speaking Spanish to a Samoan. That meant that the FAA had to determine a way to convert their system information into a long, lat system (they ended up doing something similar to placing a transparency grid over the screen, Cheap Shot, who was in Boston working the problem, talks about how they did it in one of his posts I believe.) At that point they were able to tell NORAD which one of the hundreds of dots was the plane they were after, that took time however and NORAD basically at that time had a policy of not launching without a target (remember that that time all the military could do in a hijacking was trail the plane, they couldn't take military action in a law enforcement situation, it's against the US Constitution.) This lead to a short delay (about 5 mins) to the launching of fighter to Flight 11 (not that they would have made it anyway as they were launching at about the same time as Flight 11 crashed and were about 15 mins away, they arrived shortly after Flight 175 hit.)

So yes it may also have made a difference on the day. Had Flight 11 not had its transponder deactivated (Flight 175 didn't, the pilot tried but merely switched its mode rather then turning it off) NORAD could probably have located it faster and the fighters might have been in a position to have stopped Flight 175. However the fact that NORAD didn't learn about Flight 175 till it was too late and there wasn't an approval to fire on a civilian airliner until after 10am, an hour later, probably wouldn't have prevented 175's attack anyway.

How do you define shortly? Could the planes from Otis arrived just seconds after flight 175 hit WTC 2? Could the fighters from Otis fired a couple of missiles at 175 just before impact?

[funk de fino]

According to the FAA they notified NORAD at 08:40 of a supected hijacking of Flight 11 and the fighters from Otis were airborne by 08:52

Is this correct?

If it is correct, having been part of the RAF Northern Quick Reaction Alert standby team, many times, this is not slow and is indeed pretty impressive.

I see no delay here, perhaps Atrain might enlighten me?

[funk de fino]

How do you define shortly? Could the planes from Otis arrived just seconds after flight 175 hit WTC 2? Could the fighters from Otis fired a couple of missiles at 175 just before impact?

No, they could not and would not have fired missiles at Flight 175.

[DGM]

How do you define shortly? Could the planes from Otis arrived just seconds after flight 175 hit WTC 2? Could the fighters from Otis fired a couple of missiles at 175 just before impact?
No! What pilot would fire missiles at a target over heavily populated area? It's stupid, the pilot rightfully would think about what would happen to the wreckage or the missiles if they missed.

Your plan has no basis in logical reality.

[A-Train]

According to the FAA they notified NORAD at 08:40 of a supected hijacking of Flight 11 and the fighters from Otis were airborne by 08:52

Is this correct?

If it is correct, having been part of the RAF Northern Quick Reaction Alert standby team, many times, this is not slow and is indeed pretty impressive.

I see no delay here, perhaps Atrain might enlighten me?

OK, I'll enlighten you. NEADS knew of the hijacking-- not a suspected hijacking, a certain hijacking-- no later than 8:40. The scramble order was not issued until 8:46, and the fighters got off the runway at 8:52.

Why was there a six minute delay before the scramble order was issued? Six minutes is an eternity when you have a hijacked plane streaking toward a population center.

By the way, 8:40 is the absolute latest that NEADS knew about the hijacking. There is significant evidence Boston Center notified NEADS quite a bit earlier than that that AAL11 was a potential emergency, and therefore a potential hijacking.

[funk de fino]

OK, I'll enlighten you. NEADS knew of the hijacking-- not a suspected hijacking, a certain hijacking-- no later than 8:40. The scramble order was not issued until 8:46, and the fighters got off the runway at 8:52.

Why was there a six minute delay before the scramble order was issued? Six minutes is an eternity when you have a hijacked plane streaking toward a population center.

By the way, 8:40 is the absolute latest that NEADS knew about the hijacking. There is significant evidence Boston Center notified NEADS quite a bit earlier than that that AAL11 was a potential emergency, and therefore a potential hijacking.

12 minutes from notification to getting birds in the air is very fast mate

why do you think this is slow?

[MikeW]

OK, I'll enlighten you. NEADS knew of the hijacking-- not a suspected hijacking, a certain hijacking-- no later than 8:40. The scramble order was not issued until 8:46, and the fighters got off the runway at 8:52.

Why was there a six minute delay before the scramble order was issued? Six minutes is an eternity when you have a hijacked plane streaking toward a population center.

By the way, 8:40 is the absolute latest that NEADS knew about the hijacking. There is significant evidence Boston Center notified NEADS quite a bit earlier than that that AAL11 was a potential emergency, and therefore a potential hijacking.
Six minutes has never been an "eternity" for any previous hijack. Why was this assumed to be different?

By comparison, SEADS were notified of the loss of radio contact with Payne Stewart's jet at 9:55 am; the scramble order wasn't issued until 10:08 am (http://911myths.com/index.php/Payne_Stewart), a 13 minute delay. Perhaps 9/11 wasn't so bad after all.

[Reheat]

OK, I'll enlighten you.

It's quite obvious that you can not enlighten anyone about anything regarding 9/11 or NORAD.

What you call and "emergency" was NOT an emergency at the time. A hijacking WAS NOT an emergency prior to 9/11. It is only the benefit of hindsight that you call it an "emergency".

Apparently, you really don't realize or acknowledge just how stupid it is to say "Six minutes is an eternity when you have a hijacked plane streaking toward a population center." How did you know or how did anyone know he was headed toward a population center to act as a missile? JFK is on the way toward where he was headed, so how did anyone know where he was going? Clue bird (for free) - they didn't.

Only troofer pilots would have shot down either AA11 or UA175. Fortunately, there are not many troofer pilots. Fortunately, real pilots flying for the USAF have more sense than that.

[Reheat]

By comparison, SEADS were notified of the loss of radio contact with Payne Stewart's jet at 9:55 am; the scramble order wasn't issued until 10:08 am (http://911myths.com/index.php/Payne_Stewart), a 13 minute delay. Perhaps 9/11 wasn't so bad after all.

And even that was a waste of resources. It took air defense fighter out of their primary role and cast them in the role of observers to a tragedy.

That is NOT the job of NORAD in spite of troofer mythology.

[Reheat]

why do you think this is slow?

Don't you know? Because DRG told him it was. He's a mindless drone, can't you tell?

[Tweeter]

No planes hence no reaction.

[WildCat]

No planes hence no reaction.
It took 26 posts for you to reveal yourself a no-planer? Why so shy?

[stateofgrace]

I commend you for your ability to think and act on you own if you were in the air on 9/11. Why do you think the fighters from Langley or some other air base did not do that, think and act on their own? I still believe Flight 93 was shot-down on 9/11 and the passengers had nothing to do with bring that plane down.

Phone calls?

Faked ?

[A-Train]

12 minutes from notification to getting birds in the air is very fast mate

why do you think this is slow?

We're not talking about the twelve minutes. We're talking about the six minutes before the scramble order was issued. The reason it is so slow is because there is no excuse for it. It cannot be explained. There is no reason not to get the birds in the air immediately.

It is almost as inexplicable as the Langley fighters flying out over the Atlantic while hijacked jets are flying over the continental US toward Washington DC.

[Tweeter]

It took 26 posts for you to reveal yourself a no-planer? Why so shy?

Naah, i just thought that one up.
Could you imagine,if the system did work and the fighter planes got there in time only to see there were no planes.

[MaGZ]

Phone calls?

Faked ?

One phone call came from a passenger in the restroom who said he saw a flash and then heard air rushing into the plane.

[WildCat]

We're not talking about the twelve minutes. We're talking about the six minutes before the scramble order was issued. The reason it is so slow is because there is no excuse for it. It cannot be explained. There is no reason not to get the birds in the air immediately.

It is almost as inexplicable as the Langley fighters flying out over the Atlantic while hijacked jets are flying over the continental US toward Washington DC.
This from the guy who claimed Mossad agents flew the planes and parachuted out the landing gear doors just before impact?

It seems the word "inexplicable" means something different to you.

[funk de fino]

We're not talking about the twelve minutes. We're talking about the six minutes before the scramble order was issued. The reason it is so slow is because there is no excuse for it. It cannot be explained. There is no reason not to get the birds in the air immediately.

It is almost as inexplicable as the Langley fighters flying out over the Atlantic while hijacked jets are flying over the continental US toward Washington DC.

A six minute delay is not long when you consider the country was not under attack at that point. It only became clear when flight 11 hit the tower at around 08:46 that this was an unusual occurrence.

Compare this reaction time to similar incidents. Is this slow? from getting a scramble order we had 10 mins to get our birds airborne pre 2001. They did it faster than we could. I have actually been involved in realtime scrambles for russian aircraft. Have you? What is your experience?

Who do you think purposely delayed the scramble order and what difference would it have made if this delay had not happened?

You have consistently showed on this forum that you are a bigot and a fraud so I do not expect much from you.

[Reheat]

One phone call came from a passenger in the restroom who said he saw a flash and then heard air rushing into the plane.

FALSE INFORMATION. Is that all you have? I'm really not interested because it will just be more junk.

[funk de fino]

One phone call came from a passenger in the restroom who said he saw a flash and then heard air rushing into the plane.

Incorrect claim. I believe the claim is an explosion of some sort and white smoke.

This phonecall contents are uncorroborated by the person who took it. IIRC I also believe the family have denied this claim also?

[PhantomWolf]

It's my understanding that if the transponder is turned off the tag does not disappear. The tag changes color and continues on the projected path. I believe this is to let the ATC know there is a problem and give them an idea of where to look. The issue is if the plane turns (like they did) the projected path stays the same.

Thought this might help.

When the transponder was turned off. The controller immediatelly switched on his primary radar. It is not that evident the target in the data block turns from a right slash to with a diamond over it to a diamond with no slash until the primary is switched on in which case if you do it early enough the diamond will continue on the present heading and should now be somewhere near a small plus sign. These slahses and diamonds are like a 6 Font size and no bells or whistles go off. If you catch it early enough which the ZBW controller did, you can try to retrack the aircraft to the primary target, if it does track up, the plus sign goes to an x.

[Beerina]

At all times, NORAD must have known the location of each of the four planes.

Assuming their software was smart enough to keep "last known transponder value" sent associated with that particular blip. Given transponder and radar data would have to be interleaved by semi-intelligent software to begin with, this should be the case. Have flags pop up for things like:

1. No transponder signal for > x seconds.

2. Transponder ID shifts to different number.


...but I wouldn't hold my breath on any of that.


In any case, it took until the 2nd plane before anyone seriously concluded it wasn't an accident. Add 15 to 30 minutes on top of that for thinking and response, and you pretty much see what happened.

[PhantomWolf]

OK, I'll enlighten you. NEADS knew of the hijacking-- not a suspected hijacking, a certain hijacking-- no later than 8:40. The scramble order was not issued until 8:46, and the fighters got off the runway at 8:52.

Why should it have? Go and look at what Cheap Shot posted again. Note where he twice says that they contacted NEADS to get an attitute of the plane. Also notes where he says that they spend 5 mins trying to figure out how to communicate the planes position. Finally note that you are wrong when you claim that the FAA contacted NORAD by 8:40am. The FAA didn't contact NORAD until 10:10am. Boston Tower contacted NEADS at around 8:40am. Boston Tower did not have the authority to request assistance, someone at NEADS had to decide they would do a scramble in the first place, and from Gumboot's previous postings likely needed that authority granted from a higher up.

You seem to think that the instant NEADS was told by Boston that there was a highjacking, they should have had planes in the air to... do something. That just isn't the way it worked, ever.

Heck Cheap Shot also says that he believed that Flt 11 was heading to land at JKF and that he knew fighters would get the in time. In time for what? For Flt 11's landing. You seem to think that NEADS should have instantly known that Flight 11 was about to be crashed into WTC 1. What a crock, only four people on the planet knew that, and they were all onboard Flt 11!

[PhantomWolf]

We're not talking about the twelve minutes. We're talking about the six minutes before the scramble order was issued. The reason it is so slow is because there is no excuse for it. It cannot be explained. There is no reason not to get the birds in the air immediately.

What reason was there to get them into the air instantly? It was a highjacking and Boston wanted to know the alitude of the plane as it came in towards JFK for landing. Where is the emergency? Whereis the need to have fighters there now? Where is the pre-2001 procedure that says Hijacked planes are a reason to instantly launch fighter for intercept? Where is the precedent of hijacked planes in US airspace being intercepted by NORAD?

It is almost as inexplicable as the Langley fighters flying out over the Atlantic while hijacked jets are flying over the continental US toward Washington DC.

Why? At the time the only plane known to NEADS was the Phantom Flight 11 and the pilots weren't given a z-point since no-one knew where that plane was. That given they followed standard procedure and headed for their standard interception z-point. Surely it would be far more unusual if the pilots were heading somewhere other then what they would have practiced and had drummed into them from the word go.

[Reheat]

Well, as I was out of touch for over 6 hours due to driving, I see that our erstwhile troofer has disappeared again. He does that consistently. When he gets slammed he goes away just to return another day with the same ****.

You see he has swallowed DRG's crap supplemented with Robin Horton's crap that it's impossible get past that multi-crap screen.

One thing we've over looked in debunking his posts is that NORAD is not required to responded to an FAA request for assistance. They are authorized to do so, but they are not required until the NMCC tell them to respond. That was one of the reasons Col Marr chatted with his boss at Tindell on 9/11. Of course, they would not even contemplate doing this for a "boggie" in the ADIZ. For that they would respond immediately and with urgency.

Robin Hordon has convinced him that when then the FAA says "jump" NORAD asks "how high". As you all know that is not the case.

I suspect nothing will work with him, but he is so easy maybe we shouldn't care. He is an embarrassment to the TM, so we need to keep him going.

[gumboot]

Just how much "vital manpower" do you think was drained away from the ATC system to watch AAL11's primary fly to its target? The answer is almost none. Yes, maybe a handful of controllers helped watch this target, mostly because it was such an unusual and urgent situation. But the idea that it was a huge burden on ATC resources to track the primary targets on these four planes is ridiculous.

Please cite where I claimed that it was a "huge burden".

What we do know is that the loss of transponder on AA11 resulted in the controller handling AA11 offloading all of their aircraft onto other controllers and closing their sector. What we do know is that the controller trying to track and contact AA11 was engrossed enough in this task that he failed to notice UA175's transponder change twice (UA175 was hijacked in the same sector as the controller handling AA11 at the time).

I have never claimed that the deactivating of transponders prevented the FAA doing their jobs (the exception would be the case of AA77, but that was just dumb luck more than anything). But it made their jobs just that little bit harder.


Remember, we are talking about four separate targets that were being tracked, at various times, by personnel in at least four different ATC centers. Of course, the AAL77 primary re-emerged after the first two planes had already crashed, and at a different facility (Washington Center) to boot. UAL93's transponder was not turned off until all three other planes had crashed, and of course was also at another facilty (Cleveland Center) as well.

Your attempt to explain the failure of the air defense system as being caused by an ATC system overwhelmed with trying to track four primary targets is a joke. You are either woefully uninformed, or are trying to construct a smokescreen.

No smokescreen here, just a raging strawman. I have never claimed that failure to intercept the four hijacked airliners was caused by the FAA being overwhelmed. Please provide a quote of me ever stating this, or withdraw your baseless accusation.


A very nice lecture about how NORAD and ATC work. But what does any of this have to do with 9/11? Absolutely nothing. You are trying to impress us with your detailed knowledge of minutae, but you seem to have no idea how it applies to what actually happened on 9/11.

The OP was asking about the affect transponders would have on NORAD. I was explaining the air defense system to them in order to address their question. If you have a problem with the OP take it up with Caper, not me.


Actually, the system was set up quite well. The FAA identified the hijackings and notified NORAD promptly. The fighters were ready to go, but for some mysterious reason, were not scrambled until it was too late.

You have repeatedly demonstrated total ignorance of this topic. The above statement is just one more to add to the collection.

By the way, the hijackings were not simultaneous at all, as I noted above. Can you show me how, for example, any one of the hijackings had a detrimental effect on the efforts to respond to another one?

And another.

-Gumboot

[gumboot]

No, Cheap Shot did not get that detail wrong. I think the military liaison at Boston Center understands the situation better than a filmmaker in New Zealand. NEADS did indeed have authority to scramble fighters on their own.

Cute. They did not. And once again your "evidence" is pathetic. We'll get to that soon.


Think about it in common sense terms. Do you really think, with America under aerial attack, with not a second to spare, that the fighter jets needed to defend the country are going to have to sit and wait for some general on a golf course in Florida to answer his cell phone?

Very funny. The NMCC is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No calls to golfing generals required.


reference d refers to JCS Directive 3025.15, which says:

So NEADS was fully authorized to scramble jets immediately in response to this "exigent emergency," and the idea that they needed to wait for authorization from the NMCC or anyone else is yet another smoke screen.

Please, please please read your references properly.

CJCSI 3610.01A references DODD 3025.15. Specifically it addresses the powers authorised by DODD 3025.15 for immediately responding to requests from civil authorities for assistance.

Right so far. However you need to read section 4.7.1 of this document "Immediate Response".

4.7.1. Immediate Response. Requests for an immediate response (i.e., any form of immediate action taken by a DoD Component or military commander to save lives, prevent human suffering, or mitigate great property damage under imminently serious conditions) may be made to any Component or Command. The DoD Components that receive verbal requests from civil authorities for support in an exigent emergency may initiate informal planning and, if required, immediately respond as authorized in DoD Directive 3025.1 (reference (g)).

Oops, looks like you forgot to mention that the actual powers for immediate response are covered in another DODD - number 3025.1. What does that say?

This Directive:

...

2.6. Does not include military support to civil law enforcement.

Doh! Not looking good so far. Never mind, let's find the bit on Immediate Response (sec.4.5)

4.5. Immediate Response
4.5.1. Imminently serious conditions resulting from any civil emergency or
attack may require immediate action by military commanders, or by responsible officials of other DoD Agencies, to save lives, prevent human suffering, or mitigate great property damage. When such conditions exist and time does not permit prior approval from higher headquarters, local military commanders and responsible officials of other DoD Components are authorized by this Directive, subject to any supplemental direction that may be provided by their DoD Component, to take necessary action to respond to requests of civil authorities. All such necessary action is referred to in this Directive as
"Immediate Response."

Well that sounds pretty good, right? Not so fast.

4.5.4. Immediate Response may include DoD assistance to civil agencies in
meeting the following types of need:

4.5.4.1. Rescue, evacuation, and emergency medical treatment of
casualties, maintenance or restoration of emergency medical capabilities, and
safeguarding the public health.

4.5.4.2. Emergency restoration of essential public services (including firefighting, water, communications, transportation, power, and fuel).

4.5.4.3. Emergency clearance of debris, rubble, and explosive ordnance
from public facilities and other areas to permit rescue or movement of people and restoration of essential services.

4.5.4.4. Recovery, identification, registration, and disposal of the dead.

4.5.4.5. Monitoring and decontaminating radiological, chemical, and
biological effects; controlling contaminated areas; and reporting through national warning and hazard control systems.

4.5.4.6. Roadway movement control and planning.

4.5.4.7. Safeguarding, collecting, and distributing food, essential supplies,
and materiel on the basis of critical priorities.

4.5.4.8. Damage assessment.

4.5.4.9. Interim emergency communications.

4.5.4.10. Facilitating the reestablishment of civil government functions.

Hrm. For some odd reason that document mentions nothing at all about intercepting hijacked airliners and shooting them down. Odd that, isn't it?

Let's go back to that original document - CJCS 3610.01A. Wonder if it has anything to do with this little snippet:

a. General.
Military personnel will provide the following types of support: intercept, surveillance, lift, equipment, and communications.
Military personnel may not participate in a search, seizure, arrest, or
other similar activity. This restriction would include the apprehension
of aircraft hijackers or use of military aircraft (fixed-wing or helicopter)
or other vehicles as platforms for gunfire or the use of other weapons
against suspected hijackers. In addition, assistance may not be
provided under this enclosure if it could adversely affect national
security or military preparedness.

Oops! Back to remedial reading for someone!

-Gumboot

[PhantomWolf]

This restriction would include the apprehension of aircraft hijackers or use of military aircraft (fixed-wing or helicopter) or other vehicles as platforms for gunfire or the use of other weapons against suspected hijackers.

hah! Thanks Gumboot, that regulation backs up what I was saying 110%. I have this funny feeling this thread will continue to remain an A-Train free zone from now on, lol.

[dudalb]

FALSE INFORMATION. Is that all you have? I'm really not interested because it will just be more junk.

What can you expect from a Neo Nazi?

[gumboot]

hah! Thanks Gumboot, that regulation backs up what I was saying 110%. I have this funny feeling this thread will continue to remain an A-Train free zone from now on, lol.


I was trying to be gentle so I didn't mention these two other bits from the regs:

4.7.2.1.
The Secretary of Defense is the approval authority for any requests for potentially lethal support (i.e., lethal to the public, a member of law enforcement, or a Service member) made by law enforcement agencies. Lethal
support includes: loans of arms; combat and tactical vehicles, vessels or aircraft; or ammunition. It also includes: all requests for support under 10 U.S.C. 382 [nuclear and biological weapons] and 18 U.S.C. 831 [nuclear and biological weapons]; all support to counterterrorism operations; and all support to law enforcement when there is a potential for confrontation between law enforcement and specifically identified civilian individuals or groups.

4.7.2.2.
The Secretary of Defense is the approval authority for all assistance with the potential for confrontation between Department personnel and civilian individuals or groups.

DODD 3025.15


4.8.1.
Responsibility for managing the Federal response to acts of terrorism in the United States rests with the Attorney General of the United States.

4.8.1.1.
The Attorney General coordinates all Federal Government activities during a major terrorist incident and advises the President as to whether and when to commit Military Forces in response to such a situation.

4.8.1.2.
In the DoJ, the lead Agency for the operational response to a terrorist incident is the FBI. The initial tactical response to such incidents is made by the FBI Special Agent in Charge at the scene, under the supervision of the Director of the FBI, who has overall responsibility for ongoing operations to contain and resolve the incident.

DODD 3025.12

An important point that Conspiracy Theorists seem to miss is that the protocols distinguish between "aircraft piracy", "terrorism", and an "air defense emergency".

The protocols for responding to each of these distinctly different incidents is markedly different. On 9/11, of course, the nature of the attacks was such that is constituted aircraft piracy, terrorism, and an air defense emergency. But in making allegations about what actions should have been taken, it is important to determine the level of escalation...

a) When did authorities know it was an aircraft piracy event?
b) When did authorities know it was a terrorist incident?
c) When did authorities know it was an air defense emergency?

You can appreciate the problem for the military if you consider:

a) For aircraft piracy, the NMCC can issue escort orders on receipt of a request from the FAA Hijack Coordinator. These aircraft cannot use lethal force.

b) For a terrorist incident, the NMCC can authorise military support on receipt of a request from the Attorney General and approval from the Secretary of Defense. This may include authorisation to use lethal force.

c) CINCNORAD has the authority to declare an Air Defense Emergency, implement SCATANA and issue whatever Rules of Engagement he feels is appropriate.

-Gumboot

[gumboot]

hah! Thanks Gumboot, that regulation backs up what I was saying 110%. I have this funny feeling this thread will continue to remain an A-Train free zone from now on, lol.


I doubt it. I've lost count of the number of times I've pointed out that particular paragraph to him. Conspiracy Theorists take intellectual dishonesty and raise it to an art form.

(Remember when one of them (I think it was A-Train) quoted an FAA order proving that a loss of transponder and communication should be treated as a hijacking, ignoring the fact that the order in question was one introduced after 9/11, and that the one in place on 9/11 required receipt of the 7500 code?)

-Gumboot

[gumboot]

I didn't want to start a new thread about this, but in working on a new little project of mine I've uncovered a large amount of material that (unsurprisingly) reinforces the idea that the system could not prevent the hijackings, and that NORAD and the FAA did everything they could.

The details will be in my work when it's done, but I wanted to share a few tidbits.
-Aircraft Piracy and Terrorism are regarded as distinctly different events, and the procedure for acquiring military assistance in each case is very different.
-NORAD Active Air Defense Missions (scrambles to intercept unknown aircraft entering the ADIZ from overseas) are distinctly different to FAA requests for escort fighters.
-NORAD did not scramble alert fighters to intercept Payne Stewart's learjet - all of the fighters that shadowed his aircraft were unarmed and the Air Force unequivocally stated at the time that they absolutely did not even consider the possibility of shooting the aircraft down - even if it crashed into a heavily populated area.
-Fighters were scrambled from an air base that had armed alert fighters, but the alert fighters were not used.
-Before the Payne Stewart incident, there were two other similar incidents that resulted in interception. The first, in 1980 involved the interception of a Cessna 441. When ANG fighters eventually reached the aircraft it was over 1,000 miles off course - a distance that would take the Cessna 441 at least 3 hours to cover. The second was a 1988 incident which was intercepted by a fighter trainer pilot that was already in the air at the time.
-Escort fighters for a hijacking could only be requested by the FAA Hijack Coordinator, and had to be approved by the Secretary of Defense.
-The only way around this was for NORAD to declare an Active Air Defense Mission, however NORAD regulations did not allow an AADM over continental US airspace.

Anyway. Just a handful of interesting facts.

-Gumboot

[ref]

Very interesting, gumboot. Looking forward to the full release of your project.

[gumboot]

Sorry to keep bombarding this thread, but something has occurred to me.

The one real blot on NORAD's performance on 9/11 is the scramble for the F-16s from Langley which were sent east over the Atlantic rather than North Northwest to Baltimore. It was only a brief delay before the error was rectified, and it made no real difference in outcome, but it's still interesting to try and understand how that happened.

As far as I can tell the Langley fighters were scrambled on an Active Air Defense Mission and directed to fly AFIO (Authorization For Interceptor Operations). These protocols are strictly for dealing with unknown radar contacts entering the ADIZ from international airspace. NORAD Regulations actually explicitly state that they are not to be used for the escort of hijacked aircraft over the Continental United States.

We can assume that by 0922 when the Langley fighters were scrambled, NORAD was aware that this incident did not fit into a regular "escort of hijacked aircraft" scenario. There's every indication that there was already talking of declaring an Air Defense Emergency at this stage, and implementing SCATANA. So it makes sense that the scramble was done as an Active Air Defense Mission and not as an escort of a hijacked aircraft.

However we don't know what the pilots or Navy ATC were told. I can imagine they were initially given a scramble to Baltimore to intercept a hijacked airliner, but then some moments later were told they were needed for active air defense and were to scramble under AFIO conditions.

Now, NORAD and FAA regulations state that an escort of a hijacked airliner is to be terminated if the aircraft are needed for an active air defense mission, as these take precedence. It seems at least probable to me, given how much was happening that morning, that the Navy ATC and the Langley pilots assumed the AFIO order was in response to a new unknown contact approaching the ADIZ which would of course take priority over the hijacking escort.

This would explain why they altered their course and headed east.

-Gumboot

[PhantomWolf]

This would explain why they altered their course and headed east.

Did they alter course and head east? I was under the impression that they headed east right away, if that's wrong, I'm willing to be corrected here.

[gumboot]

Did they alter course and head east? I was under the impression that they headed east right away, if that's wrong, I'm willing to be corrected here.


They were originally scrambled to head to Baltimore, however before they actually departed the "mix up" occurred and they received another scramble notification without directions that they thought superseded the original scramble, so they reverted to the default departure.

Hence my suspicion is that they were originally issued an escort scramble order to Baltimore (escort scrambles must include an intercept point and the pilots have to be notified of why they're scrambling) but before they were actually airborne, in response to increased tensions, the scramble was modified from an escort to active air defense. However the pilots and ATC, if it wasn't made clear the AAD was for the same scramble, may have assumed the AAD was a different scramble. AADs take priority over a hijacking escort, so without a heading for this AAD they would have headed east.

Like I say, this is only speculation on my part, but it fits all the supported facts. Another alternative is that the Navy ATC was told it was an AAD scramble but the pilots were told it was a hijacking scramble, and they between them concluded there were two separate ones (and the AAD taking priority) whereas of course in reality the hijack was the AAD.

-Gumboot

[PhantomWolf]

Thanks, and yes, that does make sense. It'd also explian the obvious frustration in NEADS on learning they were going the wrong way.

[A-Train]

They were originally scrambled to head to Baltimore, however before they actually departed the "mix up" occurred and they received another scramble notification without directions that they thought superseded the original scramble, so they reverted to the default departure.

They were scrambled to head to Baltimore? Really? Got any proof of that, or is it mere speculation on your part?

I happen to believe the Langley fighters went East because that's what they were ordered to do by NEADS. The local FAA controller (Norfolk Tower) had nothing to do with it. Can you show me that I'm wrong?

I believe there are something like 120 hours of NORAD tapes from that day. Surely you can find the orders from NEADS to the Langley fighters. Why don't you do that and prove me wrong?

[DGM]

They were scrambled to head to Baltimore? Really? Got any proof of that, or is it mere speculation on your part?

I happen to believe the Langley fighters went East because that's what they were ordered to do by NEADS. The local FAA controller (Norfolk Tower) had nothing to do with it. Can you show me that I'm wrong?

I believe there are something like 120 hours of NORAD tapes from that day. Surely you can find the orders from NEADS to the Langley fighters. Why don't you do that and prove me wrong?
Why don't you provide the evidence to support your claim? That's the way it works with normal rational people.

[funk de fino]

They were scrambled to head to Baltimore? Really? Got any proof of that, or is it mere speculation on your part?

I happen to believe the Langley fighters went East because that's what they were ordered to do by NEADS. The local FAA controller (Norfolk Tower) had nothing to do with it. Can you show me that I'm wrong?

I believe there are something like 120 hours of NORAD tapes from that day. Surely you can find the orders from NEADS to the Langley fighters. Why don't you do that and prove me wrong?

Why dont you try and refute posts # 78 and 81?

[gumboot]

They were scrambled to head to Baltimore? Really? Got any proof of that, or is it mere speculation on your part?

I happen to believe the Langley fighters went East because that's what they were ordered to do by NEADS. The local FAA controller (Norfolk Tower) had nothing to do with it. Can you show me that I'm wrong?

I believe there are something like 120 hours of NORAD tapes from that day. Surely you can find the orders from NEADS to the Langley fighters. Why don't you do that and prove me wrong?


On Senior Director track 2, at about 09:22, he hear the weapons team directing the Langley fighters to scramble to the Baltimore area and set up a CAP, in response to a report that AA11 is airborne and heading to Washington.

Over the following minutes, on SD2, we hear the NORAD staff talking to Team 2-1 (the Otis fighters flying CAP over NY/Washington area) and talking of expecting Team 2-3 (the Langley fighters) to be entering the same airspace shortly.

At about 09:29 the weapons team first start asking if radar have Quit-2-5 and Quit-2-6 (the callsigns for the two Langley fighters) on their scopes yet.

At 09:32 the airborne time for the Langley fighters is confirmed as 13:25 (09:25EDT).

Then, on one of the Tracking Tech channels, at 09:34 SGT Huckabone notices the Langley fighters are headed in the wrong direction:

9:34:12
NAVY A.T.C.: You’ve got [the fighters] moving east in airspace. Now you want ‘em to go to Baltimore?
HUCKABONE: Yes, sir. We’re not gonna take ‘em in Whiskey 386 [military training airspace over the ocean].
NAVY A.T.C.: O.K., once he goes to Baltimore, what are we supposed to do?
HUCKABONE: Have him contact us on auxiliary frequency 2-3-4 decimal 6. Instead of taking handoffs to us and us handing ‘em back, just tell Center they’ve got to go to Baltimore.
NAVY A.T.C.: All right, man. Stand by. We’ll get back to you.
CITINO: What do you mean, “We’ll get back to you”? Just do it!
HUCKABONE: I’m gonna choke that guy!
CITINO: Be very professional, Huck.
HUCKABONE: O.K.
CITINO: All right, Huck. Let’s get our act together here.

Then a little later at 09:41, back on the Senior Director's channel we hear:

They're heading there now. Frikken "Giant Killer" in their wisdom sent them out over the water when we scrambled them to Washington.

Seems pretty clear cut to me.

-Gumboot