Splinx,

In regards to number 1...

I don't get what you're trying to say here... well, maybe I do, but I don't understand where you are getting this.

Of COURSE the Air Force didn't have time to scramble. We DIDN'T have birds on alert anymore, despite what most of the public thinks. Our last two alert shacks were in Iceland and S Korea. Even IF we had pilots in the cockpits of a 4 bird sortie in Virginia, firing up the APU or power carts getting ready to launch for a training sortie, to get them armed to do ANYTHING would've taken WELL over an hour.

Sure, you never see a fighter flying without missiles, but until 9/11, nearly all the time we flew fighters in the US, they had captive missiles. On an AIM-9, the GCS was the only live part- the warhead and rocket are inert. They are used for training only. The AIM-7s had passive radar in them, and the 120s had active radar in them, but the rest of the missile was inert. We didn't have live stuff just sitting around ready to be loaded, or already loaded, unless we KNEW of a threat, or the jets were doing a (RARE) live-fire sortie. In my four years, the only time I broke out live missiles to the line was when I was in the Gulf and when I pulled alert duty in Iceland. This held true even for birds that were to be called for ADIZ problems here in the US.

Having worked out in the bomb dump, I know that if we got a "take the live stuff to the line right NOW" phone call, it would take upwards of 15-20 minutes for the line-d troops (bless em!) to break stuff out and get it rolling to the line, not to mention the time it would take to load even one jet. A quick turn (engines-running turn-around) takes 10 to 20 minutes alone. Those times, plus the flight time to the hijacked jets, would give the attackers nearly an hour to lollygag around over DC, NY, or where ever.

Yes, they DO have live 20mm TP (Target Practice, not the HEI used for aircraft to aircraft) loaded, usually. It's too big a pain to UALS it down after every flight, and it does fly on every training sortie, and even for maintenance it is sometimes still left onboard. But then what kind of public outcry would the military have to stand up to because they showed home camera footage taken by some amat videographer of some F-15 jock tearing a 767 apart, bit by bit. The horror of what the passengers would be going through, knowing they were slowly being shot down, or worse, torn apart as over 100 bullets per second passed through the fuselage! If the planes were stopped from hitting the WTC and Pentagon, then there would always be questions of "Why did you have to put those passengers through THAT? Why didn't you just give the hijackers time to make demands? They ALWAYS make demands!" If the planes still lasted until the WTC and Pentagon, then the question would be "Why did you have to put those passengers through THAT? It didn't do any good, some Air Force we have!"

Bear in mind, F-15s and F-16s only carry about 550 rounds, that's under 5.5 seconds of trigger time. That's not a lot of time to parse up a 767 when you're trying to take out two engines, then pick it apart before it can be deadsticked into a populated area. Using guns for strafing and taking out other aircraft wasn't a major consideration when 15s and 16s were built- technology dictated that that was what missiles were for.

We frikkin' got caught with our pants down. This attack was of an unprecedented magnitude, in an unprecedented way. We learned a hard lesson, and we lost a lot of innocent lives. As the Iran hostage crisis changed the world older folks lived in (I was around for it, but didn't understand what the yellow ribbons REALLY meant), this attack changed the world I live in.

Sometimes, there's just not a frikkin' thing you can do.

BTW... there WERE a couple of jets launched (from Langley, I believe) once the FAA figured out there was bad mojo in the air that day, that could NOT reach the aircraft in time. The pilots of those jets were interviewed afterwards, and one of them said that he was totally unarmed, and he knew that the only thing he could do, that he WOULD do, was ram the hijacked plane with his own, most probably committing suicide in the act.

If that's doing nothing, then show me what defending your country is.

MrPex