Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
Air Defences stood down on 9 11 |
Current rating: 0 |
by see material (No verified email address) |
23 Dec 2001
Modified: 26 Dec 2001 |
A cover-up is only secure if you control 100% of the information, if you only control 98% you run the risk of exposure! |
|
See also:
www.rense.com |
This Article Is BS |
by ML (No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0 23 Dec 2001
|
Since I'm currently away from most of my reference material, I can't give a full refutation of this highly erroneous article. It should be noted that, from the long list of bases cited by the author, only Langley AFB and one or two others in the Northeast are actually bases that have aircraft assigned to the air defense mission. The others may have aircraft available, but this means little in the context of Sept. 11. Even bases that had assigned aircraft only had two planes on alert at any particular time. This is nothing new, as the US air defense mission has been scaled back to this status since the end of the Cold War. The aircraft at Langley, for instance, actually were deployed there from their homebase in North Dakota.
In addition, the palns for air defense by NORAD were all designed to deal with a threat from aircraft coming into the US from outside, NOT from hostile aircraft already within US airspace. In hindsight, this is short-sighted, given what we now realize can happen. The author proves little or nothing of what is being charged. |
Some Factual Background |
by ML (No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0 26 Dec 2001
|
On NORAD's history:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/norad-overview.htm
On the strategy behind NORAD interveptor bases, pre-Sept. 11:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/overview.htm
"A dedicated continental air defense force is no longer needed."
This one is a report from 1994. It details the very limited air defense program that was in existence then and proposals to cut it even further. Way before and totally unrelated to Sept. 11.
http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9476.htm
Buried in this article is the fact that there were a total (for the entire US) of 20 Air National Guard interceptors on alert at 10 different locations across the entire US.
http://www.ang.af.mil/ngb/paih/heritage.htm
This copy of a Washington Post article says that the force structure for intercept operations was distributed to a total of only seven bases nationwide on Spet. 11. The only bases in the Northeast with alert aircraft were Otis AFB in Massachusetts and Langley AFB in Virginia.
http://www.freedomdomain.com/Templemount/9_15c.html
Note: This website spins pretty flaky stuff, but it had the Washington Post article available. I can't vouch for anything else on it, however. |