NORAD and the jets diverting...

I watched a documentary on National Geographic channel "Inside 9/11" which said that it was NEADS (NorthEast Air Defense Sector) that was running drills on that day.

Inside 9/11 website

However, the documentary further went to play recordings of NEADS staff which confirmed this. A staffer asked: "Is this real world or exercise?" Why else would you ask that if had been (or were) running drills of that?

It also noted that:

F-15 fighter jets are dispatched from Otis Air Force Base in Mass., but because Flight 11's transponder is off, Air Force pilots do not know which direction to travel to meet the plane. NEADS personnel spend the next several minutes watching their radar scopes waiting for Flight 11 to reappear.

Reappear? Reappear?? Its there! The transponder still relays the position of the aircraft!! How a civilian air traffic controller see Flight 77 (the one that crashed into the pentagon) and a trained military one not see Flight 11? They both had their transponders off!

Ref: Interview with ATCs on 9/11, proving they saw flight 77

The only non-conspiracy conclusion one can draw is that either the military controllers were inept, or there were somehow lots more planes over New York than Washington.

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My guess is that one of the NEADS controllers noticed Flight 11. AS a low-down guy, not involved per se, he probably bumped the question up to his boss. This is how the jets got ordered to divert away, away from flight 11.

90+% of radar in the United States is owned and operated by CIVILIAN controllers. The NORAD screens are all running off repeaters from the civilian screens. Military and Civilian radars can not work in the same area together. The military radar will interfere with the civilian one every time. If a military radar is going to be turned on for testing, they have to call the control tower, if they're near a civilian airport, and let them know when, and for how long, before they can activate the system.

The transponder does NOT transmit when it's turned off. Otherwise why would there be an "off" position on it? The reason they said "reappear" is because under 18,000 feet the radar that is used is capable of getting a skin paint off the plane, so they can track it that way. Above 18,000 feet they don't use the same system, so they have a much harder time tracking, if they can track at all. The fighter radar will do wonders and is capable of tracking many targets, but if they don't know where to tell them to go to look that radar is useless. Even if they know the general area they fighters will have to arrive there, and start flying a search pattern, and all the time they are doing that, the target plane is flying away from them.

The transponder emits flight data like altitude, speed etc, but if its turned off all you see is a blip, right? But it still visible...i always thought that was the case...

that's not true over 18,000 feet. There are two radar systems in use. Primary and Secondary. Secondary goes from 18,000 up and only reads transponders. Primary goes from 18,000 feet down and THAT will give you a blip on the screen. They don't use Primary over 18K because of all the traffic up there.

Check out this post:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

and this post:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

for more on the drills.

Ah I see, thanks Zaphod.

One thing still remains: We know the plane descended in order to prepare to strike the twin towers...if they were looking for it, why didn't they notice a new blip coming onto their screen as Flight 11 descended through the 18,000 ft barrier?

Oh, they'll just be wringing their hands and saying they made a big mistake.

The government, I think, would rather be viewed as incompetent rather than complicit, if it's an inside job.

Can't they just have no off switch? That would be much easier don't you think?

The fact that NORAD was running drills of hijacked planes going into the WTC and PEntagon in the weeks up to and on the morning *during* the actual attacks, and then standing down shows at least something odd going down.

The fact some of the 19 hijackers are still alive, or suppoedly were stayign with FBI agents/perhaps were fbi informants and COULD NOT fly planes very well is another very odd thing.

Cheyney who was in control of the NORAD drills had taken the authoirty away from NORAD in june 2001 to shoot down planes. He was working with the CIA, FBI, etc...and ya look what agencies were housed in the WTC7.

Just a few key points of interest, but the whole NORAD thing I think has to be one of the pivotal smoking guns of something not being right.

Originally posted by Mudja
Ah I see, thanks Zaphod.

One thing still remains: We know the plane descended in order to prepare to strike the twin towers...if they were looking for it, why didn't they notice a new blip coming onto their screen as Flight 11 descended through the 18,000 ft barrier?

They did. The F-15s arrived over the city just as the plane struck the WTC. By the time they were low enough to find them, and notified the Eagles, and they got there, it was too late.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
They did. The F-15s arrived over the city just as the plane struck the WTC. By the time they were low enough to find them, and notified the Eagles, and they got there, it was too late.

Sort of like how the interceptors got to the Pentagon too late, after they were issued from Langley's AFB and not Andrew's AFB, which is 10 miles from the Pentagon and had interceptors ready to go, waiting for orders to be sent up.

If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC) and to ask for a military “escort aircraft” to follow the flight, report anything unusual, and aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency. The NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance. If there was approval, the orders would be transmitted down NORAD’s chain of command and direct the sector to launch a fighter escort.

The protocols did not contemplate an intercept. They assumed the fighter escort would be discreet, “vectored to a position five miles directly behind the hijacked aircraft,” where it could perform its mission to monitor the flight path of the aircraft.



The Command Center kept looking for American 77. At 9:21, it advised the Dulles terminal control facility, which urged its controllers to look for primary targets. At 9:32, they found one. Several of the Dulles controllers “observed a primary radar target tracking eastbound at a high rate of speed” and notified Reagan Airport. FAA personnel at both Reagan and Dulles airports notified the Secret Service. The identity or aircraft type was unknown.

Reagan Airport controllers then vectored an unarmed National Guard C-130H cargo aircraft, which had just taken off en route to Minnesota, to identify and follow the suspicious aircraft. The C-130H pilot spotted it, identified it as a Boeing 757, attempted to follow its path, and at 9:38, seconds after impact, reported to Washington Tower: “looks like that aircraft crashed into the Pentagon sir.”

“We’re looking—we also lost American 77.” The time was 9:34.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

There was no stand down. Just a system that didn't work, and wasn't set up to handle a situation like 9/11.

[edit on 13-9-2005 by Zaphod58]

A faulty system is putting it lightly. You've just had two planes crash into the WTC towers in an obvious terror attack, the FAA has just ordered down all commercial flights, and Flight 77 responds by turning off its transponders and doing a 180 around the West Virginia/Ohio border. And it manages to make it all the way back to Washington to crash into the Pentagon, 28 minutes later, with no consequences. Faulty at best. Amazing coincidence that the wargames were going on that morning, huh?

It wouldn't have mattered. The FAA wasn't running the exercise, and they were the ones that had the confusion over notifying NORAD, and notified them late.

Originally posted by Zaphod58

Originally posted by Mudja
Ah I see, thanks Zaphod.

One thing still remains: We know the plane descended in order to prepare to strike the twin towers...if they were looking for it, why didn't they notice a new blip coming onto their screen as Flight 11 descended through the 18,000 ft barrier?

They did. The F-15s arrived over the city just as the plane struck the WTC. By the time they were low enough to find them, and notified the Eagles, and they got there, it was too late.

The official time frame places jets finally being scrambled over an hour after the planes went astray.

Anyways, even if your timeline is correct, how do you feel the multiple hijacked airplanes into the WTC/pentagon NORAD war games that were going on before and during the morning of the actual attacks? Do you think this had something to do with the fighters not getting to where they were suppose to?

Originally posted by Zaphod58
It wouldn't have mattered. The FAA wasn't running the exercise, and they were the ones that had the confusion over notifying NORAD, and notified them late.

NORAD wasn't contacted, several other agencies were, right after the first plane deviated from it's path. They just tell you the NORAD story because it would seem like nothing happend or that the FAA is to blame.

And why didn't they allow the fighter jets to go supersonic? Are you really going to buy the story that they did this to keep the peace? After planes had crashed already? Don't tell me you're that gullible.

And who was in control that day of the military command (or was it the airforce?) Dick Cheney...

I already discussed the fighters not going supersonic in another thread, but there are two reasons they didn't. One being that they CAN'T if they're carrying external fuel tanks and missiles, the other being if they dumped the tanks and missiles to go supersonic, they would have approximately 45 minutes of fuel before they would have had to land or re refueled in flight.

An F-15 has a top speed of Mach 2.5, in a perfectly clean configuration, under perfect conditions. With 8 missiles, and three external fuel tanks, it has a top speed of about Mach 0.9 due to the extra weight and drag caused by the stores.

Just because they can't hit tops doesn't mean they couldn't still book it in comparison to what speeds they did go.

The F-16s from Langley reached the Pentagon at 9:49. It took them 19 minutes to reach Washington D.C. from Langley AFB, which is about 130 miles to the south. That means the F-16s were flying at:
130 miles/(9:49 - 9:30) = 410.5 mph
That is around 27.4% of their top speed of 1500 mph.

Casually strolling over to counter a potential hijacking and another terrorist attack? Electing to preserve fuel over getting there in time?

911research.wtc7.net...

Yeah, they should have burned off all their fuel, so that they could get there with no fuel, and no weapons, so they could watch the plane hit and not do anything about it.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Yeah, they should have burned off all their fuel, so that they could get there with no fuel, and no weapons, so they could watch the plane hit and not do anything about it.

So, hey, why even take off at all? Might as well sit back and watch it happen rather than wasting fuel on getting there in time. Could've sent planes out from Andrews AFB, but nah. Waste of fuel.

Must be some serious POS's too if they can't go more than 1/4th of their top speed without burning all of their fuel in less than 130 miles.