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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

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.

This also requires the flying squadrons at a base to have fighters.

Hill Air Force Base in Utah or Seymour Johnson in North Carolina could and probably do since they have fighter wings at this bases. Somewhere like Minot in North Dakota wouldn't since the units there are a missile wing that oversees Minuteman missiles, and a Bomb Wing equipped with B-52 bombers. Unless fighters from another base just happened to be stopping by or in the air in transit, or unless there's some sort of odd training exercise that sees units from other bases coming in, you're not going to see fighters there.
 
This also requires the flying squadrons at a base to have fighters.

Hill Air Force Base in Utah or Seymour Johnson in North Carolina could and probably do since they have fighter wings at this bases. Somewhere like Minot in North Dakota wouldn't since the units there are a missile wing that oversees Minuteman missiles, and a Bomb Wing equipped with B-52 bombers. Unless fighters from another base just happened to be stopping by or in the air in transit, or unless there's some sort of odd training exercise that sees units from other bases coming in, you're not going to see fighters there.

But the Minuteman base certainly does have something ready to be set in motion at short notice...
And I would assume the presence of conventional military assets there to protect that something.
 
But the Minuteman base certainly does have something ready to be set in motion at short notice...
And I would assume the presence of conventional military assets there to protect that something.

Not fighter jets, no. Most US Air Force units at the Wing level tend to have a dedicated Security Forces squadron(Air Force military police) for armed on site physical security. This squadron is typically assignred to the Mission Support Group of the Wing.

In the case of the three Minuteman missile Wings in North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, each missile wing has and entire Security Forces Group, which contains several SF squadrons.

All of these SF squadrons are non flying units, though it wouldn't surprise me if there are personnel with access to MANPADS or something.

Minuteman silos are also spread out a grear distance. This is part of the reason each missile wing has a helicopter squadron assigned. Part for security purposes, part to make it easier and faster to get SFs, maintenance, and others to and from the missile sites in a timely manner. You could have one missile and the next closest one could easily be 5 or 10 miles away.
 
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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!"

I think it's more like if they do try to come over here and bomb us, we can see them coming and intercept.
 
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
Indeed. They should have been forewarned against the threat of.....looks at map......

Wait, who exactly could have attacked them?

Like, guys, I know it's fun to rag on the nation that bullies your leaders all the time, but at least find a good reason. It's not like the US is short of genuinely incompetent idiots.
 
Indeed. They should have been forewarned against the threat of.....looks at map......

Wait, who exactly could have attacked them?

Like, guys, I know it's fun to rag on the nation that bullies your leaders all the time, but at least find a good reason. It's not like the US is short of genuinely incompetent idiots.
Guess what, if, as a military planner, don't even properly plan for an enemy attack in your country, then you are a genuinely incompetent idiot. Like the French in 1940.
 
Guess what, if, as a military planner, don't even properly plan for an enemy attack in your country, then you are a genuinely incompetent idiot. Like the French in 1940.
The French lost only because the Nazis rolled several 20s in a row. Hitler had no reasonable ability to take France as per the data of that time, since there could be no way the panzers could march through forests.

That they did was a disaster, but not one anyone (least of all Hitler himself) could have planned for. Same with the US, where the utter lack of any peer opponents for the last 150 years made the US justified in being a little relaxed.

However, the gods decided to play a prank, and the improbable happened.

However, that doesn't mean we should all become paranoiac over one in a million chances like these.
 
The French lost only because the Nazis rolled several 20s in a row. Hitler had no reasonable ability to take France as per the data of that time, since there could be no way the panzers could march through forests.

That they did was a disaster, but not one anyone (least of all Hitler himself) could have planned for. Same with the US, where the utter lack of any peer opponents for the last 150 years made the US justified in being a little relaxed.

However, the gods decided to play a prank, and the improbable happened.

However, that doesn't mean we should all become paranoiac over one in a million chances like these.
The US spent decades designing VLO planes explicitly for the goal of getting through most outer layers of an air defence system and they never planned against the same stuff used against them? Monumental idiots.
 
Obviously not. Nobody else had the stuff they did.
Do make SOME sense.
And THAT kind of mindset is called 'monumental idiocy combined with suicidal arrogance'.

Though, this is a great classic among US military planners, who get surprised again and again when their opponent isn't acting according to the US plan and strengths leading to their pretty poor military record. What kind of unfair enemy attacks at our weak points instead of our most protected zones?!
 
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And THAT kind of mindset is called 'monumental idiocy combined with suicidal arrogance'.

Though, this is a great classic among US military planners, who get surprised again and again when their opponent isn't acting according to the US plan and strengths leading to their pretty poor military record. What kind of unfair enemy attacks at our weak points instead of our most protected zones?!
Not about unfairness, just about how it takes impossibly good luck to get anything close to a shot at all. The US is protected by two oceans and two allied vassals. They literally have no need to fear nations whatsoever.

You might as well ask why Austria doesn't invest more in a navy.
 
ICBM's, terrorist-style attacks (oh wait, that happened), a couple other things other posters could think of better than me. For all that the US could think of other more far-reaching scenarios surely they can cobble together a plan in case of an attack on the home soil.
 
ICBM's, terrorist-style attacks (oh wait, that happened), a couple other things other posters could think of better than me. For all that the US could think of other more far-reaching scenarios surely they can cobble together a plan in case of an attack on the home soil.
a plan?
there was.
a 24 hour standing watch on a flight line? that had been stood down since a few years after the end of the cold war
 
They did get complacent after the Cold War ended, yes. Compared to the Batman level paranoia that defined the previous era, modern Americans seem to find it difficult to conceptualize that they can be threatened.
 
They did get complacent after the Cold War ended, yes. Compared to the Batman level paranoia that defined the previous era, modern Americans seem to find it difficult to conceptualize that they can be threatened.
Which is complete idiocy and arrogance from them, shown again and again. After all...

1610606993611.jpeg

This is how they evaluated themselves in terms of being prepared for a pandemic. And the list of idiotic assumptions from them is longer.
 
Which is complete idiocy and arrogance from them, shown again and again. After all...

View attachment 3294

This is how they evaluated themselves in terms of being prepared for a pandemic. And the list of idiotic assumptions from them is longer.
Wow. Aged like milk, much? Literally the only yellow that's correctly marked is Australia.

Though I guess the researchers foolishly decided that nations with the practical ability to withstand pandemics would actually want to use them, rather than politically grandstand to avoid having to take tough decisions.

Such naive people.
 
Wow. Aged like milk, much? Literally the only yellow that's correctly marked is Australia.

Though I guess the researchers foolishly decided that nations with the practical ability to withstand pandemics would actually want to use them, rather than politically grandstand to avoid having to take tough decisions.

Such naive people.
It's arrogance and certainty in their own invulnerability... which was the point of the thread, in the case of 9/11.
 
The French lost only because the Nazis rolled several 20s in a row.
...while the French rolled several 1s in a row.

When reading about Operation Sicle and the Fall of France...I realized there must be like a googolplex of alternate realities where the opposite had happened.

As I said in another thread: The Americans are not exceptional, it is just that everyone till the 1990s was rolling negatively loaded D20 dices that gave them 1's and 2's while Americans had fair dice with a normal statistical average of around 10.

And now the political, economic, and military laziness of the last two centuries are all coming home to roost in the US (because the US government and population hadn't seen a need to adapt or evolve to any geopolitical stimuli because everyone else was busy shooting their own genitals since 1776 till 1990...and since then the US has been coasting on inertia).
 
...while the French rolled several 1s in a row.

When reading about Operation Sicle and the Fall of France...I realized there must be like a googolplex of alternate realities where the opposite had happened.

As I said in another thread: The Americans are not exceptional, it is just that everyone till the 1990s was rolling negatively loaded D20 dices that gave them 1's and 2's while Americans had fair dice with a normal statistical average of around 10.

And now the political, economic, and military laziness of the last two centuries are all coming home to roost in the US (because the US government and population hadn't seen a need to adapt or evolve to any geopolitical stimuli because everyone else was busy shooting their own genitals since 1776 till 1990...and since then the US has been coasting on inertia).
Now now, you can't say the same for after the 1950s. That would insult the sheer awesomeness of political strategists from Indira Gandhi to Ho Chi Minh to Deng, all of whom used frankly genius strategies to seize the initiatives and give their nations a lasting advantage at the cost of temporary pain.

And if not for Nixon's genuine political genius (he may have been a crook, but he wasn't a stupid one), the US would have completely lost the Cold War. That long nosed cheat gets points for that.

Then there is the actual stupidity with consequences. That dumbass crushing Japan and leaving China the sole Asian Dragon, whichever fool decided to attack Vietnam without reading up on their history, Nixon losing the Indian Subcontinent for the stupidest reasons possible, and whatever dark god convinced the Norman Alliance to screw with the Soviet backed Egypt.

Lady Luck seems to have dipped out of human affairs after Hitler died, leaving it all to us mortals. For good or evil
 
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 delusions of grandeur and a way they have had perceived their security enviroment - everything outside is populated by orks that besige the last stroghold of civilisation in the grim dark future of III millenium
They never thought, that the greatest therat, will come from within.
 
American delusions of grandeur and a way they have had perceived their security enviroment - everything outside is populated by orks that besige the last stroghold of civilisation in the grim dark future of III millenium
They never thought, that the greatest therat, will come from within.
Actually, they did, Lincoln said it explicitely.
 
Actually, they did, Lincoln said it explicitely.

Well, that Lincoln on the throne is not living corpse but stone statue, and they have seem to not buy newest edition rulebook.

Problem lays in the fact that US was then, but still is, considering themselves to be somethink synonymous with civilisation, humanity and being a top dog in everything. They consider themselves to be so powerful that they are out of touch from mere mortals. They do not see themselves as just another nation state.
At least officialy. During COld War they have at least kept apperences and tried to perform nominaly. Post 1989 they conclded they are at the end of history and the balance of power from that point onward will freeze in place for eternity (vide our recent discussion about the rise of the Middle Kingdom).

As for REFORGER, here is th '83 after action report.
In summary, evrything will be fine if nothing breaks down, ie. WarPac SOFs won't turn FOB into new year fistivities or civilian shipping would avaiable for rapid militarisation round the clock.

As for forecasting future enviroment, have that. Enjoy reading.
[free download]
 
No wonder some Americans clings to conspiracy theories to cope with 9/11. I remember reading that truther comic and there's thus one part where they addressed the military issue during 9/11, and the conclusion the comic drew was "No way the US military is this negligent. If anything, this is a proof that it's an inside job!".

And come to think about it, a lot of American conspiracy theories really are just "No way America is bad at anything. It must be a conspiracy!".
 
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