NORAD's Response On 9/11
I sent a letter.
Hi NORAD,
I was hoping you can help me out. It's hard to find any information on this particular subject. In the event of an air emergency, what is the average response time of an intercept?
Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Jon Gold
The response...
Sir: Unfortunately there are too many variables to give you an accurate answer. The bottom-line is we have alert aircraft at various locations throughout the U.S. (and Canada with NORAD) and it would just be a matter of minutes from the time they are notified until they where airborne. So then it depends on where our aircraft took off from and where is the "target" aircraft--you can look at our Air Force aircraft fact sheets on the F-15 and F-16 fighters (Canada uses mainly CFA-18 aircraft) to determine their speed and look up the speed of the target aircraft with a web search to roughly calculate the time and place the intercept would occur depending on the location of the aircraft. The fact sheets are located at this web site: http://www.af.mil/factsheets/
Here's a very rough example from a non-pilot (me): An F-15, with a top speed of 1,800 mph could intercept an aircraft 600 miles away flying parallel to where the fighter took off in 20+ minutes or so, now if the "target" aircraft is flying at 600 mph and heading toward the place where the fighter took off then the intercept would be at the 400 mile mark and would likely take only 13 minutes or so--theoretically, depending on winds and weather, etc...
vr
MSgt Timothy L. Hoffman, USAF
Superintendent, Alaskan Command Public Affairs
9480 Pease Ave, Ste 136
Elmendorf AFB, AK 99506
DSN 317-552-7567/2341; comm. (907) 552-7567/2341
Fax: 317-552-5411
My response...
Thank you very much for your timely, and informative response. Would this have been true on 9/11?
Again, thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Jon Gold
His response...
I can't say for certain...but probably not, because before 9/11 our focus was protecting our airspace from EXTERNAL threats--i.e. threats coming from outside North America. Also, before 9/11 as far as I know there was no codified command and control procedure for intercepting civilian domestic flights--since there was never a need for those procedures.
hope this helps,
Tim
My response...
Hi MSgt Hoffman...
I know this is a response that took a while, but after re-reading your response... it doesn't make sense to me that with the money that we spend on defense, no one in the military was focusing on INTERNAL threats at the time of 9/11, and before. If NORAD didn't focus on INTERNAL threats, then who did?
Thank you.
Jon Gold
I haven't heard from MSgt Hoffman yet. Here are the questions the families got together for the Commission to ask NORAD.
NORAD
Unanswered Questions From The Family Steering Committee
http://911independentcommission.org/norad31804.html
March 18, 2004
1. Was NORAD aware of the four hijacked planes veering off course even before being reported by the FAA? If not, please explain why NORAD which monitors 7000 flights a day, was unable to track the four aberrant flights.
Linda Slobodian writes in “Norad on Heightened Alert: Role of air defence agency rapidly transformed in wake of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks”
“Where was Norad, the multimillion-dollar, 24-hour eyes and ears of North American skies, when the hijacked planes embarked on their sinister missions?
Ironically, Norad was doing its job: peering 300 kilometres out into the Air Defence Identification Zone encircling North America. Its task: to help assess, within two minutes, if each of the 7,000 incoming aircraft every day is friend or foe….
When the second plane hit the other World Trade Center tower, Norad swiftly shifted its attention to help prevent possible further attacks.
Norad was instrumental in getting fighter jets -- normally on 15-minute alert -- airborne within eight minutes. ”
http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/calgaryherald101301.html
2. Why weren’t the jets able to intercept the hijacked planes if they were airborne within eight minutes of notification?
3. Why did NORAD wait until after the second plane hit the WTC to try and prevent possible further attacks?
4. Why weren’t the fighter jets that tailed flights 11 and 175 as they crashed into New York’s WTC, rerouted to intercept flights 77 or 93, before they crashed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania?
5. Where surveillance satellites orbiting North American airspace on 9/11?
• What exactly does the satellite imaging reveal?
• What companies own these satellites?
• Where are the records and logs for these orbits?
Recommendation: Examine the records and logs of surveillance satellites.
NORAD
1. At precisely what time was NORAD notified of each plane being hijacked? What was their response? What is the name of the individual who determined from which bases the F-16s should be scrambled from? What are the names of the pilots of these f-16s?
2. Whose decision was it to not utilize the F-16s' weapons?
3. Whose decision was it to not fly the F-16s at maximum speed?
4. Why didn't the F-16s intercept the hijacked airliners?
5. Please draw up a chart of NORAD's response to the Payne Stewart Lear jet incident vs. the 9/11 incident. Why was protocol not followed on 9/11? What is the name of the individual who did not follow protocol? Where are the transcripts from the F-16s? Where is the log and record from NORAD?
6. What satellites were orbiting North American airspace on 9/11? What exactly does the satellite imaging reveal? What companies own these satellites? Where are the records and logs for these orbits?
Wiki says...
"After the events of September 11, 2001, the NORAD mission evolved to include the monitoring of all aircraft flying in the interior of the United States."
So, their "excuse" is that NORAD didn't monitor the airspace within the United States at the time of 9/11.
Ok, that makes sense to me. The reason there was no military response on 9/11 was because there was absolutely no one monitoring the skies over America.
Reason being, planes that fly over the continental United States never have any technical problems. They never fly off course. They have transponders that never fail, and so on.
That makes perfect sense.
Dr. Robert Bowman has been quoted as saying, "I know the procedures."
Can someone please tell me the procedures he's referring to?
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Barrie Zwicker had some
Barrie Zwicker had some interesting comments about Norad during his latest radio appearance, including a horrifying tale about a flight of geese.
It's beyond preposterous to suggest that Norad was basically clueless about internal threats until the events of 9/11. It's amazing they're able to get away with this fairy tale. I feel for the poor schlep assigned to answer emails.
Also, don't forget, the NRO drill caused an evacuation;)
I Know It's Preposterous
Which is why I want someone qualified to talk about it to put them to shame. I wish Dr. Bowman could stop by to comment here. This is his area of expertise.
I think the war games of 911
I think the war games of 911 have been GROSSLY UNDERPLAYED by virtually everyone in the movement.
I find it incredible that Fetzer is able to go on a program and ramble on for 90 minutes WITHOUT EVEN MENTIONING THIS SMOKING GUN.
The war games may very well be the KEY TO THE ENTIRE PUZZLE.
Think about it now: this is how they conduited the entire operation. THIS is how they were able to snooker honorable military personnel. THIS is how they were able to get those jets in the air.
In all probability, the "hijacking drills" explain the "cell phone" calls.
WE NEED TO FOCUS MORE ON THE WAR GAMES
"I wish Dr. Bowman could
"I wish Dr. Bowman could stop by to comment here."
Jon, I'm sure if you emailed him or one of his associates (any semi-prominent member of the 911 truth movement) you would get a response. Unfortunately, said response will be watered down as much as possible, since Bowman is, after all, an aspiring politician. No doubt about it, we need more military folks on board. The "code of silence" and faux-patriotism thing is killing us.
It's funny (not really funny, but you catch my drift), I spoke to a Canadian soldier a ways back. HE WAS FULLY AWARE OF 911 TRUTH, yet he was still willing to fight in Afghanistan. Amazing what these mind scientists have accomplished over the years.
BTW, I saw the coming attraction for "press for truth" and I'm a little discouraged. Does it mention WTC7 and the war games?
Don't Be Discouraged
This movie paints the picture perfectly regarding Government complicity. In a way never done before. Yes, it does mention WTC7.
I agree.
I posted on Jon's board yesterday that Popular Mechanics says there were no domestic intercepts from the Cold War until 9/11 other than Payne Stewart's flight. I thought that if this is true, it kills most air intercept arguments. Upon further reflection, the war games are still huge. The bottom line is (a) they were are amazing coincidence; (b) a mole told the hijackers/patsies to act on the same day of the drills; or (c) our government controlled/penetrated the hijackers and scheduled the drills when they did for a reason. I'll go with choice C.
Payne Stewart
The original AP article says, "In that legendary intercept, a fighter jet out of Tyndall, Florida was diverted from a training flight to escort the Lear, whose pilot had become incapacitated, trapping Stewart in the stratosphere. An F-16 was reportedly sitting off the left wingtip of Payne's pilotless business jet within 19 minutes of the FAA alert. [ABC News, Oct 25, 1999]"
911myths.com says that it took an hour and 19 minutes because they crossed over time zones. Popular Mechanics is also repeating this information. An hour and 19 minutes seems like a ridiculously long amount of time to let a plane fly around.
I think I'm going to go with what MSgt Timothy L. Hoffman says regarding time of intercepts...
An F-15, with a top speed of 1,800 mph could intercept an aircraft 600 miles away flying parallel to where the fighter took off in 20+ minutes or so, now if the "target" aircraft is flying at 600 mph and heading toward the place where the fighter took off then the intercept would be at the 400 mile mark and would likely take only 13 minutes or so...
It's over an hour
The NTSB report says:
"At 0933:38 EDT (6 minutes and 20 seconds after N47BA acknowledged the previous clearance), the controller instructed N47BA to change radio frequencies and contact another Jacksonville ARTCC controller."
"About 0952 CDT(7) a USAF F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, was vectored to within 8 nm of N47BA."
Note (7) says:
"7 About 1010 EDT, the accident airplane crossed from the EDT zone to the CDT zone in the vicinity of Eufaula, Alabama."
So it's an hour and 19 minutes. You can find the NTSB report here:
http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm
I guess they weren't worried about it crashing into a building, so there wasn't that much of a hurry.
Personally, I can't figure out why the FAA would keep the hijacks secret from the military, which is basically what the 9/11 Commission claimed - mostly based on NEADS audio files.
btw, Indianapolis control centre did call Langley AFB to look for American 77 at 9:08, but they called search and rescue, allegedly because they thought it had crashed. What search and rescue did with this information is not known (at least not to me). Shouldn't they have, like, told the base commander and taken off to look for it?
Where then
Did ABCNews get it's 19 minutes from?
I imagine...
At the time of the AP story, someone told AP that it took 19 minutes. I NEVER heard of the time zone change until about 6 months ago.
alex jones had some comments
alex jones had some comments on this regarding the hour+ response time yesterday on the jack blood show.. might be worth checking out..
I heard
The blah blah blah depressurized blah blah blah yell scream, etc... I couldn't make out what he was saying.
i think he was arguing that
i think he was arguing that it took an hour before the distress call, not an hour to do the scramble, but i really dont know without listening to it again.
That's what I thought I heard...
But again, thought I heard. I'd like to know his sourcing, etc...
Kevin...
You work for Paul?
This and that
Yes, I occasionally do a little work for Paul, although I should do more really. At the moment I'm trying to digest the second Moussaoui document dump. Plus, I've just seen an unredacted copy of the FBI OIG report - with the mysterious chapter 4 included.
I checked the NTSB report using the Wayback Machine. The earliest hit for it was 17 April 2001. The report is the same and has the same different time zones and the note saying it went from one time zone to another. Check it out here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm
If one reads the report not very carefully (i.e. ignoring the time zones) or if one gets rush information about the event where the time zones are not given, then this gives the impression it took 19 minutes, not one hour 19 minutes.
btw, this:
"At 9:53, FAA headquarters informed the Command Center that the deputy director for air traffic services was talking to Monte Belger about scrambling aircraft." (9/11 CR, p. 29-30)
is entirely meaningless, because neither Belger not the deputy director could recall the conversation, which the Commission admits in an endnote (but nobody reads the endnotes). In actual fact, Belger told the 9/11 Commission that he thought the FAA had already informed the NMCC of United 93 (but the guy at the NMCC put the phone down or something), so why would he be discussing telling the military 10 minutes after he thought he had already told them? That's kind of convoluted - sorry.
If you ask me, there was no stand down or slow down, but I really doubt the war games were a coincidence. Pure speculation: find the guy who was giving the hijackers extra flying lessons, and you'll find the guy who told them about the wargames.
Huh?
I'm not the brightest bulb on the planet, so I have a question regarding the intercept/time zone question.
D= R X T
Let's say for example that the intercepting aircraft takes off at 8:00 AM in hot pursuit of whatever it is and wherever it is. It gets airborne and goes at a certain speed, averaged, until it gets to point X in near proximity to its target. Let's assume that the plane can fly at 1,200 mph average,a nd that it took off on the East Coast, and it was in pursuit of a target bound for Los Angeles. The target it was pursuing was flying at, say 600 mph,and it had been airborne and had a lead of 400 miles. By the time (due to the need for airborne refueling) it got over downtown LA, the pursuit plane had traveled 3,600 miles and so took three hours, but we need to add three hours for time zone changes along the way so it actually took six hours?
Isn't EDT and MST and stuff like that relative to time on the ground at a specific location? Isn't time zone change an abstract to help us slower humans account for the rotation of the earth?
Isn't the issue here the real time relative to the plane and how fast it took to get from point A to point B? To the poor jamoke on the ground below, it's an hour later. To the pilot in the plane, it's still east coast time until he lands in a different time zone.
Or maybe I didn't take enough math...
D = R x T* (subject to the earth's rotation)
:)
You're saying 19 minutes is 19 minutes regardless of the time zone.
Yes...
If I had driven a Ferrari from NY to LA in the Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash in 36 hours, it would taken me 36 hours, not 33 hours. The fact that it's three hours earlier there in LA when I showed up is immaterial.
Barrie Zwicker...
Has said that the moment he didn't see any military response, he knew something was up. After the Pentagon was hit, even I said to my friend at the time, "Where's our military?"
Is everybody under the assumption that the military has the ability to protect our skies or something? Why would that be?
NORAD's Response On 9/11
...because before 9/11 our focus was protecting our airspace from EXTERNAL threats--i.e. threats coming from outside North America...
Come on, like someone else said, once hostile jets reached our borders, NORAD was rendered useless to help us? What b.s.
Moreover, what if jets were attacking us from say, Cuba, only 90 miles outside our borders??? They'd be over Florida in 1 minute! Then what, NORAD would loose them?
Why the need for these if it wasn't their responsibility?
http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3437
How can NORAD say that and
How can NORAD say that and in the meantime, conduct war game exercices precisely about highjacked aircraft INSIDE US airspace. That's silly.
"If you ask me, there was no
"If you ask me, there was no stand down or slow down, but I really doubt the war games were a coincidence."
I think there was probably both: but that's pure speculation (unless you count minetta). Any way you shake it, the scholars NEED TO FOCUS MORE ON THE WAR GAMES.
I want you to imagine that
I want you to imagine that the "war games" of 911 were a "coincidence".
Think about what that means.
It means that it was a "coincidence" that that the NRO was perfoming a "drill" of "crashing hijacked airliners into buildings"
Think about how insane you'd have to be to regard this as a "coincidence". Considering everything else that was going down.
Please, for the love of Pete, someone convince the "scholars" to talk about the war games.
I agree
The war games is a very surprising coincidence. However, I think the scholars want to focus on the hard evidence rather than the more political or difficult to prove things such as war games. I'm sure that it will form part of their arguments, but I doubt it will be a focus as there's no way to prove that it wasn't coincidence.
Sorry, but...
I disagree with you. It's very easy to prove Wargames were taking place that day. Wargames that were not mentioned in the 9/11 report. A report that was supposed give a "Full and complete" accounting of the attacks of 9/11. Cynthia McKinney tried to get the powers that be talk about it, and she was lied to. The Wargames need to be addressed, and should become a HOT TOPIC for anyone who gets media attention.
Sorry..
I didn't mean that wargames couldn't be proven to have happened. I mean it's difficult to prove that the wargames were more than a coincidence. If you have any information to prove it was setup to distract air defense, then please show it so I can add it to my site :]
I can't prove...
That they were specifically set up for that... we would need a real investigation. I CAN prove there was a lot of confusion that day as a result of those Wargames.
The New York Times reported that "audiotapes provided to the commission by Norad demonstrated widespread confusion within the military on the morning of the attacks, with many air-defense commanders uncertain whether the reports of the hijackings were part of an unannounced military exercise."
That same article also reported that the "Military Did Not Lie to 9/11 Panel"
So... they didn't lie, eh?
What's General Myers doing then when the BRAVE Cynthia McKinney questions him on the wargames?
Click Here
Cynthia McKinney: The question was, we had four wargames going on, on September 11th, and the question that I tried to pose before the Secretary had to go to lunch was whether or not the activities of the four wargames going on, on September 11th, actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks.
General Myers: The answer to the question is no.
Remember, only ONE Wargame was mentioned in the 9/11 Report, and it only received a footnote in the back of the book.
This was a good article
That I thought got little attention at the time...
A Review Of The New Wargames Timeline
I've asked
Dr. Bowman to stop by and comment on this. Hopefully, he will.
Mindy Kleinberg's Partial Testimony Before The 9/11 Commission
FAA and NORAD
Prior to 9/11, FAA and Department of Defense Manuals gave clear, comprehensive instructions on how to handle everything from minor emergencies to full blown hijackings.
These "protocols" were in place and were practiced regularly for a good reason--with heavily trafficked air space; airliners without radio and transponder contact are collisions and/or calamities waiting to happen.
Those protocols dictate that in the event of an emergency, the FAA is to notify NORAD. Once that notification takes place, it is then the responsibility of NORAD to scramble fighter-jets to intercept the errant plane(s). It is a matter of routine procedure for fighter-jets to "intercept" commercial airliners in order to regain contact with the pilot.
If that weren't protection enough, on September 11th, NEADS (or the North East Air Defense System dept of NORAD) was several days into a semiannual exercise known as "Vigilant Guardian". This meant that our North East Air Defense system was fully staffed. In short, key officers were manning the operation battle center, "fighter jets were cocked, loaded, and carrying extra gas on board."
Lucky for the terrorists none of this mattered on the morning of September 11th.
"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." - Gandhi
NORAD scrambles pre-9/11
NORAD scrambles and interceptions prior to 9/11 were a regular thing. A 1994 report by the US General Accounting Office said: "Overall, during the past 4 years, NORAD's alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft (referred to as scrambled) 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of suspected drug smuggling aircraft averaged one per site, or less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites' total activity. The remaining activity generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress."
This report is available here: http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9476.htm
Or a PDF version here: http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat3/151250.pdf
So if NORAD's alert fighters took off 1,518 times over four years, this averages approximately once per day. According to this report, 93 per cent of scrambles involved "visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress." So the aircraft must have been intercepted in order for this to be possible.
Thanks...
Shoestring.
"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." - Gandhi
I have a dumb question...
What is the need to develop stealth technology?
___________________________________
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."
Do our "enemies"...
Have better radar than the mighty American military?
___________________________________
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."
Too funny...
The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States—and using them as guided missiles—was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11.
p17 - 9/11 Report
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
It's amazing the things you forget... That USA Today story came out in April 2004. The 9/11 Report was released in July 2004. This is a BLATANT lie from the 9/11 Commission.
"So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Richard Cheney - Chief Executive Of Halliburton