Text 27328, 74 rader
Skriven 2009-02-06 14:15:35 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 27274 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
Ärende: War On Terror Is Over
=============================
05 Feb 09 05:43, Bob Ackley wrote to Ward Dossche:

 RW>>> They wouldn't get very far off the ground before they'd be
 RW>>> intercepted by F-16s with orders to shot it down if they don't
 RW>>> respond to radio communication. You're aware of the procedure from
 RW>>> take off to flight paths, you should already know this.

 WD>> After take-off from 22L such a plane is airborne for 45 seconds
 WD>> before it starts its left turn towards the ocean... 1m15s from
 WD>> Manhattan. Impossible to stop if such flight crew is determined to
 WD>> do it. Before anyone knows what has happened the Empire State
 WD>> Building has already collapsed. Events unfold just too fast.

 BA> Note that the fighters that were dispatched to intercept the
 BA> jetliners on 9/11 did not find them,

That's because they weren't dispatched until after the Pentagon had been
hit.

 BA>  and in the US northeast there were precisely *four* fighters
 BA> available,

Not true. Air defense around Washington is provided mainly by fighter
planes from Andrews Air Force Base, near the District of Columbia border.
The D.C. Air National Guard is also based there and equipped with F-16
fighter planes.

 BA> and only two of them on ready alert;

The claim at the time was that NORAD had the exclusive duty to dispatch
the fighters. Andrews had 4 or more aircraft on ready alert, but they
belonged under the jurisdiction of DCANG (District of Columbia Army
National Guard), who didn't (didn't at that time anyway) get their
scramble orders from NORAD.

 BA> in point of fact there were probably no more than a dozen or so
 BA> fighters on ready alert in the whole country, I doubt that there are
 BA> any more on ready alert today.

In fact there are.

The Air National Guard exclusively performs the air sovereignty mission in
the continental United States, and those units fall under the control of
the 1st Air Force based at Tyndall...

The Guard maintains seven alert sites with 14 fighters and pilots on call
around the clock. Besides Homestead, alert birds also sit armed and ready
at Tyndall; Langley AFB, Va.; Otis Air National Guard Base, Mass.;
Portland International Airport, Ore.; March ARB, Calif.; and Ellington
Field, Texas.

The new F22s have just recently been put into service at some of those
bases.

 BA> In any case the Empire State Building is of different construction
 BA> than the WTC buildings (and most newer skyscrapers) and would
 BA> probably survive such an event. In the late 1940s or early 1950s a
 BA> USAF B-25 crashed into it, if I remember the story correctly one of
 BA> the aircraft's engines went clear through the building and fell on
 BA> the other side.  Damage was limited to a couple of floors of the
 BA> building.  The aircraft was flying in dense fog and the pilot had no
 BA> idea the building was in front of him.

A true story.

                R\%/itt


"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man
 who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson


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