How An American F-16 Pilot Was Given A Kamikaze Mission On Sept. 11

a reply to: ignorant_ape
Wouldn't that take a certain amount of coperation from the airliner?
As in don't turn away from me so I can fly in front of you.

a reply to: samkent

If they turn away they miss their target and you stop them.

originally posted by: samkent
a reply to: freedom12

No it's just a rehash because of the aniversary.

And that is just a rehash of the original story from September 9, 2002.

"F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"

originally posted by: Aleister
Very interesting story, in terms of who ordered the suicide mission. Was this one of the decisions Dick Cheney made in his bunker? There was a lot of talk that he did order that United 93 be downed, and this may confirm that (the orders to do this, to take down a passenger plane, had to come from high up on the political-food chain).

Yep. What most 9/11 conspiracy theorists call the "stand-down order" was actually the shoot-down order being communicated to the fighters at Andrews Air Force Base through the Secret Service from the PEOC at the White House.

Which raises the questions why werent those jets armed? Was it common for interceptor jets to not be armed, was it a novelty introduced a few years ago or even a couple months prior to 911?

originally posted by: Merinda
Which raises the questions why werent those jets armed? Was it common for interceptor jets to not be armed, was it a novelty introduced a few years ago or even a couple months prior to 911?

Andrews was never an alert base, no need for live weapons sitting on airplanes that are not on alert. From the article:

The DCANG was not in the Norad or NEADS communication and command loops, so its pilots weren't on the same frequencies as Norad air defense fighters. The Andrews-based F-16s were launched by the Secret Service and someone in the White House command center, not Norad. At the time, there was no standing agreement between the Secret Service and the 113th Wing for the latter to provide fighters in response to an attack on Washington.

and

"We really didn't know the intricacies of Norad's mission--how it works," Thompson explained. "We've never been an air defense unit. We practice scrambles, we know how to do intercepts and other things, but there's a lot of protocol in the air defense business. We obviously didn't have that expertise, but it worked out fine.

IIRC, Gen. Wherley, the Andrews base commander on 9/11, told the 9/11 Commission the idea of having fighters sitting around with live missiles on them near the executive and Air Force One was frowned upon at that time.

a reply to: Merinda

There were only seven bases that had armed fighters for the entire continental US. At one point there was a large alert force but budget cuts in the 90s cut them way back, because the Soviet threat was gone.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: StratosFear

Now it's a lot more common. On that day it was seven bases, of which three were in the southeast watching for drug smugglers.

So it could be argued that the US drugs policy, may well have contributed to either the Pentagon plane getting through, or even perhaps one or both of the twin tower hits?

a reply to: MysterX

I would say it's more like if it weren't for America's drug policy, the 3 southern alert facilities probably would not have been there.
At one point there were over 100 alert sites on the Continental United States at the height of the Cold War. As Zaph mentioned earlier, NORAD's budget was cut after the fall of the Soviet Union because it was thought there was no longer an external threat.