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IGNORADThe military screw-up nobody talks about.

By Scott ShugerPosted Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2002, at 5:20 PM ET

For all its successes, the U.S. anti-terror war was conceived in sin, the sin of U.S. government negligence. As much post-9/11 journalism has pointed out, there was the foreign-policy error of abandoning post-Soviet Afghanistan after having infused it with weapons, the CIA's failure to act more forcefully on tips and intercepts regarding al-Qaida operatives overseas, and the FBI's and INS's similar failings regarding suspicious characters already in the United States. And the FAA's (and the airlines', the airports', and security firms') breakdown on airport security. However, there has been a good deal less focus on another federal fubar, that perpetrated by the Air Force's North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

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The NORAD home page declares its mission to include "the detection, validation, and warning of attack against North America whether by aircraft, missiles, or space vehicles." It may seem ungallant to say the obvious, but since no one else has, I will: At the aircraft part of this mission, NORAD sucks.

How does NORAD explain its failure to intercept any of the hijacked airliners on 9/11? Its commander, Gen. Ed Eberhart, pointed out in congressional testimony that the FAA has the primary responsibility for hijackings in U.S. airspace, that NORAD can only help respond once the FAA notifies it, and that on 9/11 the FAA delayed precious minutes before doing so. Eberhart has also said that while before 9/11, NORAD had practiced responding to a hijacked plane trying to slam into a target in the United States, the exercises assumed that the flight had originated overseas, giving intercepting jet fighters more time. More important, he also said that even if his aircraft had practiced the domestic scenario, it wouldn't have mattered. Why? "I really think that, for sure in the first two instances, and probably in the third, the time and distance would not have allowed us to get an airplane to the right place at the right time."

It's certainly true that the FAA didn't give the Air Force the speediest heads up: Newsday reported that the FAA delayed 29 minutes (!) before telling the military about the third (!) suspicious plane, the one that ultimately hit the Pentagon. And before 9/11, a domestic-hijacked-airliner-suicide attack was admittedly not the most probable of worries. But it's simply wrong to say that therefore, there probably wasn't anything NORAD could have done to change history.

According to NORAD's official 9/11 time line, the FAA notified NORAD at 8:40 a.m. Eastern time that there was something peculiar going on with American Flight 11. But NORAD didn't issue an order for fighters to scramble until 8:46 a.m., the time when American Flight 11 hit the first WTC tower. Six minutes later, at 8:52 a.m., two F-15 fighters responded to the order by launching from a base 153 miles from New York City. They still were not on the scene at 9:02 a.m. when the second airliner, United Flight 175, hit the second WTC tower. They wouldn't get there for another eight minutes, at 9:10 a.m. A NORAD senior officer, Major Gen. Larry Arnold, told NBC that when the fighters took off, they were flying straight to New York City. He also said that they were going "about 1.5 Mach, which is, you know, somewhere—11- or 1,200 miles an hour." But note that the F-15 fighters took 18 minutes to cover those 153 miles, which comes out to more like 510 mph. Yet, according to the Air Force, the F-15 has a top speed of 1,875 mph. So, you have to wonder, why were they flying at less than a third of what they're capable of?

According to NORAD, the FAA notified it at 9:24 a.m. that there was something suspicious with American Flight 77. Two F-16 fighters were immediately ordered launched, and they got airborne at 9:30 a.m. The New York Times reports that at first, they were headed to New York at "top speed" reaching "600 mph within two minutes," before vectoring toward Washington instead. These planes didn't arrive in the vicinity of the Pentagon until 9:49 a.m., 12 minutes after American Flight 77 hit it. (They then stayed in the skies above Washington to protect against the fourth errant airliner, United Flight 93, with orders to shoot it down if necessary, a command mooted by an apparent passenger insurrection that caused that plane to crash in a Pennsylvania field.) The F-16s covered the 130 miles of their journey in 19 minutes, which would be an average speed of about 410 mph. Now, that's artificially low because these fighters spent several minutes flying toward New York, but even allowing for this, you don't come up with anything like what the Air Force (which may know better than the New York Times) says is the plane's top speed of 1,500 mph. So, again, why didn't NORAD feel the need for speed? It wasn't because of FAA regulations prohibiting supersonic flight over land in U.S. civil airspace. A NORAD spokesman told me that fighters violate that speed restriction "when circumstances warrant."

That is, in both cases where NORAD launched fighters, a closer look suggests that it's just false that there was nothing they could have done. For one thing, they could have flown faster.

But the flawed time/distance argument isn't NORAD's only excuse. Gen. Arnold told NBC that even if U.S. jets had intercepted the airliners, "No one would have known the intent of the hijackers. And without that, I don't think anyone would have been able to order them to shoot down that—that aircraft."

That may be true, but it's misleading. Arnold leaves out other tactics the jet fighters could've tried. According to a Boston Globe article, when intercepting aircraft, NORAD practices a graduated response. The approaching fighter doesn't immediately shoot down the bogey: It can first rock its wingtips to attract attention, or make a pass in front of the plane, or fire tracer rounds in its path. So even though on 9/11, the NORAD pilots working the first three airliners didn't have shootdown authority (they got it only after the Pentagon was hit), they would or should have been ready to try these other techniques, which might well have spooked or forced the hijackers into turning, which might have given the fighters a chance to force them out to sea. And even if the hijackers decided instead to fly right into a fighter in their way, wouldn't an airburst have killed fewer people than two collapsed flaming skyscrapers did?

After 9/11, NORAD said it adjusted to the new realities. In October, Gen. Eberhart told Congress that "now it takes about one minute" from the time that the FAA senses something is amiss before it notifies NORAD. And around the same time, a NORAD spokesofficer told the Associated Press that the military can now scramble fighters "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States."

But lo and behold, earlier this month when 15-year-old student pilot Charles Bishop absconded with a Cessna and flew it into a Tampa skyscraper, NORAD didn't learn of it until it overheard FAA radio calls about the situation, and it wasn't able to launch its fighter jets until 15 minutes after Bishop had already crashed into the building. Those fighters didn't arrive on the scene until 45 minutes after Bishop took off.

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Scott Shuger is a Slate senior writer who spent five years in the U.S. Navy and served overseas as an intelligence officer.

COMMENTS

Notes From The Fray Editor:

Many, many readers took issue with the article, in particular making points about fuel consumption and maximum speeds. Scott Shuger replies to his critics, below. There was some disagreement on how serious a threat the boy in the Cessna was: Cranky Observer says "flying at top speed [the Cessna] has less kinetic energy, and considerably less cargo capacity, than your typical minivan. And let's not even discuss 12 ft Ryder trucks…"

Further Comments From The Author:

It's once again amazing to discover that the Fray contains so many military experts and brave patriots. And all of them such fine spellers and writers! But despite this, my view of NORAD is unchanged.

Yes, as I noted in my story, the form of the attack was not very probable. Therefore, I would accept some initial reluctance on the part of the first launched fighters to e.g. violate FAA regs about overland supersonic flight and/or to get themselves into a complicated fuel situation. But it's still true that a top NORAD general overstated the speed of that initial intercept. And yes, it takes some time to reach top speed, yadda yadda, but the basic issue remains: Why does it take an F-15 18 minutes to go 153 miles or an F-16 19 minutes to cover 130 miles? It's just not true that these planes covered these distances in the fastest possible time. And I certainly don't understand why the FAA/fuel considerations weren't trumped by the 2nd tower hit. But there's no evidence that after the second hit, NORAD launched tankers or that the fighters went to a Mach 2 dash. Furthermore, after the second tower hit, the time/distance problem should have been more solvable still, because not only could tanking have been arranged by then, but also by then you could factor in a shootdown decision, which would subtract 8-10 miles (Sidewinder shot) or 12-20 miles (Sparrow shot) from the flight distance required for the fighters.

In addition, as I wrote, it's highly misleading and reflects a misunderstanding of NORAD's own playbook to continue to insist as many readers have that even if a timely intercept had been achieved, there was nothing the fighters could have done. Even though the hijackers were suicidal, they wanted to get killed hitting the WTC or the Pentagon, so the interposition of a fighter between them and those targets might well have made them turn to figure out how to do that, and even if not, a collision in the air with a fighter would have cost far fewer lives than the actual events did.

As to all the Fray rants about hindsight being always 20/20, the Tampa/Cessna incident proves this is not true at NORAD--which is why further comment and analysis from the likes of me is required.

Oh, and about that kneeslapping original quip you guys keep posting about military intelligence being an oxymoron: it's not relevant to the details of my argument, and it's not original: George Carlin came up with it in the late 60s.

--Scott Shuger

Reader Comments From The Fray:

NORAD (military in design and nature) is an early warning system against other military forces attempting to or engaging in attacking the Continental United States(CONUS)…It is not a system for detecting or thwarting a terrorist attack, which happened to originate within the CONUS. These aircraft were not the threat, it was the persons that made their way on board and used them as weapons. That's the difference here...a formation (or not) of aircraft attempting to cross into our airspace without approval will be met with force and NORAD would be the master that unleashes its dogs, but an American commercial airliner already within our confines that poses no threat--well, NORAD can't see into the aircraft and the minds of those on board and know that there is a threat!

--Eric

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

Your reference to the top speed of the F-15 and F-16 is spurious. For a fighter to fly at its top speed, it must use "maximum afterburner" or full power. At full power, fighters use their fuel at a truly impressive rate, and thus would be limited in their ability to perform a mission when they arrive at their destination, unless there was a complete plan that included aerial refueling. Really, they will run out of fuel in quite a bit less than 30 minutes of full power.

"Top speed" is a useful figure when evaluating performance capability, because it indicates the relationship of thrust to drag among other things (such as material strength, stability, etc.). For real-world consideration, the ability to just go supersonic is usually enough, and even that takes a lot of fuel in most fighters.

It is interesting to wonder what would have happened if a pair of U.S. fighters had intercepted the airliners. But based on the shock of 9/11, it's obvious that essentially no one considered that suicide airliners was a likely scenario. So, if those planes had been deterred somehow (by aerial collision, shoot-down, whatever), and an airliner had never actually crashed into a skyscraper intentionally, can you imagine the second-guessing that would take place in the aftermath??

--Dave

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

Were it not for that kid in Florida, I'd say this article is being unfair. Prior to 9/11, no military pilot would deliberately shoot down an airliner without a direct order from the Commander in Chief, and since he was busy hiding out in Air Force One which was going to and from Louisana and Nebraska, there would be no easy way to quickly get that order.

It doesn't matter if a fighter got on the scene or not, there's no way they would have taken the shot on the first two planes... maybe on the third plane. The fourth one, more likely, but it wound up not being an issue anyhow.

Considering the piss-poor performance of stopping that kid who hit the law building in Florida, I'd say that the military needs to just take this one on the chin, then adapt to the situation and fix the problem.

--mfbenson

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

I have been saying essentially what your article says since around 9:15 a.m. on 9/11, when I said to a colleague that "that'll be the last one." I was confident that once our military knew it was intentional, any other planes departing from flight plans would be dealt with appropriately. I was shocked when a plane hit the Pentagon unobstructed.

Maybe nothing could have been done, especially with the second WTC plane. But I wish someone had tried a bit harder. And the next time, I'd like to know that the people in the same position have the good sense to respond aggressively to situations like this one. Pull your superiors out of bed if you have to, but get the authority you need to respond correctly. It would be distasteful, to say the least, to shoot down a civilian airliner, but if you can't deal with distaste, find a different career.

--Jeffrey

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

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