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USAF General during 9/11: we didn't have any radar pointing towards the CONUS because everything there had to be friendly

Rufus Shinra

Well-known member
So, a book with testimonies of the people involved in the US' first response during 9/11 has gotten out, and I've seen these two gems on the Politico article:
Major General Larry Arnold, commander, 1st Air Force, Continental United States North American Aerospace Defense Command, Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida: We can't see the aircraft. We don't know where it is because we don't have any radars pointing into the U.S. Anything in the United States was considered friendly by definition.

Lt. Heather "Lucky" Penney, F-16 pilot, D.C. Air National Guard, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland: Our chain of command didn't go up to NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command], didn't go up through the First Air Force, which oversaw operations in the United States. They had no method to be able to reach down—or even be able to know that the D.C. National Guard was there and available. There were no rules of engagement. I hadn't even thought about what that kind of mission might be like on American soil.
*blinks*

Am I the only one to be astonished at the admission that a massive military force that was the target of hundreds of strategic bombers for decades decided to not have any military radar covering its own airspace and that the USAF didn't even have rules of engagement for aerial combat above its own country? What kind of unholy arrogance mixed with optimism is this?!

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/05/911-oral-history-flight-93-book-excerpt-228001
 
So, a book with testimonies of the people involved in the US' first response during 9/11 has gotten out, and I've seen these two gems on the Politico article:

*blinks*

Am I the only one to be astonished at the admission that a massive military force that was the target of hundreds of strategic bombers for decades decided to not have any military radar covering its own airspace and that the USAF didn't even have rules of engagement for aerial combat above its own country? What kind of unholy arrogance mixed with optimism is this?!

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/05/911-oral-history-flight-93-book-excerpt-228001

The arrogance that *everything* inside your airspace would be friendly. Smh.
 
So, a book with testimonies of the people involved in the US' first response during 9/11 has gotten out, and I've seen these two gems on the Politico article:

*blinks*

Am I the only one to be astonished at the admission that a massive military force that was the target of hundreds of strategic bombers for decades decided to not have any military radar covering its own airspace and that the USAF didn't even have rules of engagement for aerial combat above its own country? What kind of unholy arrogance mixed with optimism is this?!

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/05/911-oral-history-flight-93-book-excerpt-228001
"We are good people. No one will want to bomb us! Only we are allowed to bomb other bad people!"
 
Am I the only one to be astonished at the admission that a massive military force that was the target of hundreds of strategic bombers for decades decided to not have any military radar covering its own airspace and that the USAF didn't even have rules of engagement for aerial combat above its own country? What kind of unholy arrogance mixed with optimism is this?!
Radars? These clowns scrambled F-16 to intercept one of those airliners while unarmed, for fuck's sake. :D
 
Radars? These clowns scrambled F-16 to intercept one of those airliners while unarmed, for fuck's sake. :D
Yep. Though, look at it this way, these same clowns couldn't have shot down the KAL 007 either (in the US, shooting airliners is more of a Navy job, according to tradition - ask Iran about it). :p More seriously, yeah, that's pretty bad. The VVS, AdlA, PLAAF and the RAF are regularly intercepting flights that are going near restricted areas, and the worst is that 9/11 wasn't really a new-fangled kind of attack. Algerian asses wanted to do it on the Eiffel Tower in the 90s, but were thankfully less prepared than the follow-on a decade later.
 
Yep. Though, look at it this way, these same clowns couldn't have shot down the KAL 007 either (in the US, shooting airliners is more of a Navy job, according to tradition - ask Iran about it). :p More seriously, yeah, that's pretty bad. The VVS, AdlA, PLAAF and the RAF are regularly intercepting flights that are going near restricted areas, and the worst is that 9/11 wasn't really a new-fangled kind of attack. Algerian asses wanted to do it on the Eiffel Tower in the 90s, but were thankfully less prepared than the follow-on a decade later.
It's not even that. When you're coming to a military base, you're expecting a fence, a checkpoint, a bunch of bored dudes on guard duty, et cetera. When you're coming to an air base, you should be expecting at least a pair of fighters armed and fueled at the ready for immediate takeoff, <5 minutes.

You came and there is no aforementioned fighters present? Well, then you're visiting some sort of chucklefucks, no questions asked.
 
It's not even that. When you're coming to a military base, you're expecting a fence, a checkpoint, a bunch of bored dudes on guard duty, et cetera. When you're coming to an air base, you should be expecting at least a pair of fighters armed and fueled at the ready for immediate takeoff, <5 minutes.

You came and there is no aforementioned fighters present? Well, then you're visiting some sort of chucklefucks, no questions asked.
We've got the PO flying constantly, though given the much smaller geographical size of the country, I doubt all of our bases have Alert 5 fighters, that would be unnecessary considering that a couple bases - plus the nuke forces when there's a crisis - doing it can provide the same response and the PO itself will be able to react. For countries like the US and Russia, with much larger distances? Yep, makes more sense.
 
It's not like you need hundreds of extra radar stations. They have a massively redundant setup with civilian radar, all that is required is establishing a repeater setup to a military center for monitoring.

Though knowing how the US military works, their systems are probably not compatible since it is a mix of bleeding edge hypercomputers that cannot talk with their own DOS 3.0 systems that they refuse to replace, never mind trying to add air traffic control radar systems.
 
So, a book with testimonies of the people involved in the US' first response during 9/11 has gotten out, and I've seen these two gems on the Politico article:

*blinks*

Am I the only one to be astonished at the admission that a massive military force that was the target of hundreds of strategic bombers for decades decided to not have any military radar covering its own airspace and that the USAF didn't even have rules of engagement for aerial combat above its own country? What kind of unholy arrogance mixed with optimism is this?!

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/05/911-oral-history-flight-93-book-excerpt-228001
American Exceptionalism,
Only ameriCan create idiots of this caliber(I should know I'm an American)
and air power not being a thing the last time CONUS was under attack, I mean even with the Russians radar coverage of the approaches was never total, it's a hell of a blind spot yes but an inherited one down more then 3 generations
 
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We've got the PO flying constantly, though given the much smaller geographical size of the country, I doubt all of our bases have Alert 5 fighters, that would be unnecessary considering that a couple bases - plus the nuke forces when there's a crisis - doing it can provide the same response and the PO itself will be able to react. For countries like the US and Russia, with much larger distances? Yep, makes more sense.
Perhaps, but i can guarantee that if, God forbid, at one point or another la belle France would be getting itself an actual* potential adversary in within 2000 km from national borders, in 24 hours after a particular color-coded envelope will be taken from particular safe in a particular department of the French General Staff, opened and read aloud you'll be having at least a pair of the said fighters on standby at the every appropriate facility.

The situation gets complicated? 10-12 hours and astrologists are going to proclaim a week of Soviet Russia in France, resulting in appearance of vaguely disturbing rumours about people driving cars in the middle of nowhere, stopping to take a piss and ending up almost taking a shit on the spot when they get jumped by some crazy commandos, bagged, dragged before the CINT operative to be questioned and summarily detained just in case, spending next X days in a brig cell in total isolation from the outside world.

Yay, force protection and counter-sabotage defence of all things Air Defence-related, including but not limited to improvised airfields, operative ammo/fuel/etc storages, positions of all things radar-SAM-EW-comms, etc, etc :D

* — actual potential adversary is the kind of adversary that has the means, motives and, given opportunity, realistically might try coming and accomplishing his objectives by applying the said means to France. You know, not a hypothetical Russian invasion, while Russia is honestly baffled with the proposition to come liberate France from the Russian tourists, long since occupying various resorts :D
 
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It's not like you need hundreds of extra radar stations. They have a massively redundant setup with civilian radar, all that is required is establishing a repeater setup to a military center for monitoring.
You mean a setup the vast majority of individual elements of which do not provide sensor coverage below the altitude of at least a couple kilometers, that setup? :)

Though knowing how the US military works, their systems are probably not compatible since it is a mix of bleeding edge hypercomputers that cannot talk with their own DOS 3.0 systems that they refuse to replace, never mind trying to add air traffic control radar systems.
Been talking to American tanker, the dude was quite shocked when i told him that MANPADS on that infamous North Korean MBT are, in fact, a legitimate SAM system. Just saying :D
 
Been talking to American tanker, the dude was quite shocked when i told him that MANPADS on that infamous North Korean MBT are, in fact, a legitimate SAM system. Just saying :D
I remember hearing that the American military has a bloody habit of teching every damn thing whereas in the Warsaw pact (and even modern Russia), they go for simplicity and ease of use and economic with resources. Bang for buck really.
 
You mean a setup the vast majority of individual elements of which do not provide sensor coverage below the altitude of at least a couple kilometers, that setup? :)
You are ignoring the possibility of integrating ATC with dual-pol doppler radar. I'm pretty sure that the bats, drones, and bugs that are picked up on those things aren't flying at thousands of feet. Weather observation wants the raw data, but it certainly can be sifted a lot more than it traditionally is. It is also readily available without vastly increasing the numbers of radar emplacements, so the only excuse is really that no one in the military actually wanted to try and integrate multiple systems.

The answer is still laziness and stupidity, but just by degrees. They could have half-assed it and used the most minimal effort to say "we tried, but the systems we were using weren't up to the task", but instead it became "We just don't give a fuck, OK? 'Murica!".
 
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Perhaps, but i can guarantee that if, God forbid, at one point or another la belle France would be getting itself an actual* potential adversary in within 2000 km from national borders, in 24 hours after a particular color-coded envelope will be taken from particular safe in a particular department of the French General Staff, opened and read aloud you'll be having at least a pair of the said fighters on standby at the every appropriate facility.

The situation gets complicated? 10-12 hours and astrologists are going to proclaim a week of Soviet Russia in France, resulting in appearance of vaguely disturbing rumours about people driving cars in the middle of nowhere, stopping to take a piss and ending up almost taking a shit on the spot when they get jumped by some crazy commandos, bagged, dragged before the CINT operative to be questioned and summarily detained just in case, spending next X days in a brig cell in total isolation from the outside world.

Yay, force protection and counter-sabotage defence of all things Air Defence-related, including but not limited to improvised airfields, operative ammo/fuel/etc storages, positions of all things radar-SAM-EW-comms, etc, etc :D

* — actual potential adversary is the kind of adversary that has the means, motives and, given opportunity, realistically might try coming and accomplishing his objectives by applying the said means to France. You know, not a hypothetical Russian invasion, while Russia is honestly baffled with the proposition to come liberate France from the Russian tourists, long since occupying various resorts :D
Airbase protection is simple, tell the administration to increase some local taxes and bait the rioters to protest in front of airbases. Spetznaz VS Yellow Jackets will make for fun Youtube videos.

Also, you are fundamentally wrong about what we'd do to Russian operatives caught on our territory. They'd get jumped by some Légionnaires, bagged, dragged before the recruiter to be told about their new career, summarily beaten like all new recruits and then sent to Guyana just in case, spending next X weeks training in a jungle in total isolation from the outside world.

We don't take prisoners, we recruit rookies.
 
I remember hearing that the American military has a bloody habit of teching every damn thing whereas in the Warsaw pact (and even modern Russia), they go for simplicity and ease of use and economic with resources. Bang for buck really.
The American Military habit of teching every damn thing up or rather, bluntly put, the American Military's ingrained inability to tell the seeking of technological advantage over potential adversary from embarking on the idiotic Quests of Wunderwaffe Acquisition in fact is not result of intellectual retardation of the American military thinkers. Rather, this a consequence of decades of trying and miserably failing to figure a military solution to the 'Fulda Gap dilemma', so to speak.

In simplest terms possible. It's common knowledge that the American war plans on dealing with the Soviet menace if the General Secretary one day decides to pick up the phone and order himself a bottle of water from Atlantic ocean were handing on two crucial assumptions: a) air superiority; b) the logistics is largely not being disrupted. You probably heard this quite few times, i think. The reason why i'm bothering to repeat this is that contrary to popular misconception the aforementioned assumptions getting introduced into strategic and operational military planning does NOT imply that the said air superiority was considered as likely to be achieved nor that the American military planners seriously believed that the logistics will not suffer considerable disruption or worse. Nope, nothing of the sort. What it actually meant was that the Americans:

a) either achieve air superiority, or they are unconditionally fucked;
b) either prevent the logistics from being disrupted or they are unconditionally fucked;

Unconditionally, because the OWP is big and right there, while United States is also big but on the other side of the planet, not to mention the rest of important factors.

The REFORGER in fact was a nice and pretty, very reassuring show of dog and pony because in case of armed conflict between the OWP and NATO it was virtually guaranteed to blow way out of proportion very fast, resulting in a nuclear exchange between the sides. It takes a very special moron to consider it to be at least remotely likely that the US will have at least the snowball's chance in hell to succeed in shipping the substantial reinforcements onto the European theatre in such case.

Thus, the only way for US Military to somehow prevent the Red Menace from achieving its objectives and getting to wash the ash of Europe off the tanks in Atlantic ocean in 4 weeks if it actually tries was to preemptively level out the playing field by deploying additional military contingents to West Europe. After all, only an idiot prefers having to fight outnumbered and outgunned if he can bring more grunts and extra guns beforehand.

The real problem was that the above-mentioned solution, to bolster military strength of the defending force by deploying additional military contingents, was out of the question because the very attempt to pull this off would have triggered exactly what it was purposed to prevent: a full-scale Soviet invasion of West Europe.

Ultimately the only feasible way to deter the Soviets from invading was to negate a quantitative superiority of adversary by own qualitative superiority, thus presenting a credible deterrent.

Alas, to the surprise of virtually no one except the certain people in United States itself, the Quest of Achieving Qualitative Advantage was doomed to result in endless pursuit of literal game-changing wonder-weapons, because as long as peer-on-peer warfare is concerned minor technological advantage on the level of individual piece of weapon or military materiel simply doesn't directly translate into qualitative edge. In the meantime achieving overwhelming technological superiority, which does in fact directly translate into qualitative, edge against a peer opponent is realistically impossible, otherwise it won't have been called peer opponent in the first place :)

It should be noted that ultimately the American efforts to deter the Soviet invasion de-facto succeeded as no such invasion did occur, yet it seems to take having a rank of at least a Captain to be able to figure out that the role of aforementioned efforts in summary non-occurrence of the Soviet invasion was indistinguishable from zero, because the Soviet Union had about as much desire to partake in such an adventure as the Joint Chiefs to end up getting taught the certain facts of life when fighting Soviet Army.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE ARMORED DIVISIONS!!! OUR FIRST WEAPON IS SURPRISE! SURPRISE AND SHOCK! AND RUTHLESS EFFICIENCY!! AND ALMOST FANATICAL DEVOUTION TO MANEUVER!! *laughs maniacally*
 
It was too much of a bother trying to design wunderwaffen against the Soviets when we already had them in storage. A salvo of Pluton to start the discussions by erasing a number of tanks, and we try to discuss further, either here or in hell depending on the mindset of the people in charge.

Plus, mines and ATGM. A lot of them. A really, really lot of them. It's simple, it's nasty and it buys time to decide the terms of the shiny discussion. Beyond that, yeah, nukes.
 
It was too much of a bother trying to design wunderwaffen against the Soviets when we already had them in storage. A salvo of Pluton to start the discussions by erasing a number of tanks, and we try to discuss further, either here or in hell depending on the mindset of the people in charge.

Plus, mines and ATGM. A lot of them. A really, really lot of them. It's simple, it's nasty and it buys time to decide the terms of the shiny discussion. Beyond that, yeah, nukes.
Maybe it is more part of the gravy train and then a golden parachute into a cushy executive position in a defense company after retirement....
 
So, a book with testimonies of the people involved in the US' first response during 9/11 has gotten out, and I've seen these two gems on the Politico article:

*blinks*

Am I the only one to be astonished at the admission that a massive military force that was the target of hundreds of strategic bombers for decades decided to not have any military radar covering its own airspace and that the USAF didn't even have rules of engagement for aerial combat above its own country? What kind of unholy arrogance mixed with optimism is this?!

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/05/911-oral-history-flight-93-book-excerpt-228001
The US has a history of gimping it's military to uselessness about 5 minutes after their current source of strife goes away, and let it languish until the moment they caught pants down by some new development. Gimping the CONUS internal air defense network the moment the Soviet bombers went away for sure was another of these kind of "fiscal conservative" steps.
 
The US has a history of gimping it's military to uselessness about 5 minutes after their current source of strife goes away, and let it languish until the moment they caught pants down by some new development. Gimping the CONUS internal air defense network the moment the Soviet bombers went away for sure was another of these kind of "fiscal conservative" steps.
Oh those downsides of being the largest crocodile in a small pond, conveniently geographically removed from the actual crocodiles out there :)
 
What I'm seeing there is a taken-for-granted assumption that anything involving use of military force would always be happening a long way outside of the USA's borders.
"We go over to other parts of the world and bomb people there. They won't ever come over here and bomb us!"
 
America is the personification of "LMAO 'biggatons' he says..."
 
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What I'm seeing there is a taken-for-granted assumption that anything involving use of military force would always be happening a long way outside of the USA's borders.
"We go over to other parts of the world and bomb people there. They won't ever come over here and bomb us!"
It's a pretty good assumption for any conventional forms of attack, since the late-19th century, as anyone even remotely capable to pull it off will have to go through either a lot of water, or dry land considered the US' backyard, with a lot of logistical tail, which is impossible to hide.

And as shown, it fails spectacularly the moment the opponent doesn't give a damn about the above, but uses captured/subverted assets already inside.
 
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