Fighter Jets Intercept Two Small Planes in Obama Airspace

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

Fighter jets intercept two small planes in Obama airspace

Tue Aug 7, 2012 1:20am EDT

(Reuters) - Two F-15 fighter jets intercepted two small planes that strayed into President Barack Obama's airspace during a campaign visit to Connecticut on Monday and the planes landed without incident, media reports said.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command said the fighter jets intercepted a small plane over Long Island, New York, at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) and followed it until it landed, and that the pilot was met by law enforcement authorities.

Roughly half an hour later, the jets intercepted a second small plane in Connecticut near New Haven, but it was allowed to continue to its destination, NORAD said in a statement.

A local NBC affiliate, NBC Connecticut, reported on its web site that the planes had entered airspace temporarily restricted during Obama's visit to the state.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE87606F20120807?irpc=932

[Justice wanted]

1. So did these pilots get in trouble? IF they decided not to publish the president's itinary how are

suppose to know to stay out of that air space. Yeah, I know it is important thing the President's safety but you know what price are we paying because of 9/11

[MercutioATC]

2. TFRs (Temporary Flight Restrictions) are published.

It's the pilots' responsibility to review any possible TFRs along their route of flight.

This isn't a 9/11 thing, it's a case of pilots not fulfilling their responsibilities.

[Pharaoh]

3. But they could'nt intercept

1 jumbo jet headed for the pentagon with an hours warning on 911? How curious.............

[hack89]

4. Not curious at all - everything changed after 911. nt

[Pharaoh]

7. Everything changed

But the Pentagon and the airspace above DC, was and is the most heavily defended piece of land on the planet.

[hack89]

9. No it was not prior to 911

there were not elaborate defenses around the Pentagon. No missile batteries, no strip alert fighters. On 911 there were exactly 14 strip alert fighters at 7 bases in America. The closest ones to DC were Langley Va and Cape Code Ma.

What exactly were they defending the Pentagon from? There was no military threat to DC - any foreign power would attack with nuclear missiles. The Pentagon was under the flight path of a major airport - hundreds of planes passed within half a mile every day. So defending against a suicide attacker was a waste of time - there would be no time to react.

[Missycim]

5. I never thought

for a moment before 911 that a plane would crash into the World trade towers.....

[Pharaoh]

6. that's the very scenario

that NSA, CIA were warning the President about.

[Pharaoh]

8. And

recall that in October of 2000, the Pentagon and the Arlington Fire Department ran an exercise for first response simulating a plane crashing into the courtyard. Many other sources confirm that they were anticipating such attacks using planes as weapons and prepared for that possibility (Senate/House Joint Intelligence Committee Report, NORAD's Amalgam Virgo II exercise, Secret Service preparations at the Genoa Summit in 2001, and FBI/CIA memos and conversations on Moussaui pre-9/11 that indicated he might "run a plane into the Twin Towers" or that he was a "potential suicide-hijacker" - see 9/11 Commission Final Report on these).


http://www.justiceblind.com/airplanes.html

Further, former Senator Bob Graham, who held the highest Democratic position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and who organized and co-chaired the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (House-Senate Congressional Inquiry), asserts that President Bush’s statements and those of his Administration about the 9/11 attacks are inaccurate. Graham says: “The first was that it was a surprise, a bolt from the blue. The second was that no one could have imagined such an attack carried out in such a manner. The third, that since no one could have envisaged the use of commercial aircraft as a weapon of mass destruction, no one could be held accountable. The forth was that for all of the devastation, the attack was basically quite simple, requiring nineteen people and a sum of money estimated between $175,000 and $250,000" (p. 112). These are all false!

In fact, the threats were many, and we knew it was coming ... Graham says there were at least 12 instances in which intelligence found information outlining terrorist plans to use airplanes as weapons, there were at least 12 instances in which the plot could have been interdicted but mistakes by individual people assured it did not happen (and yet not a single person has been held accountable for their failures), and the plot was very complex and resilient. In fact, as Graham notes: “I find a pattern of substantial logistical, personnel, and kills development and financial support consistent with what the President was told in his fateful August 6 briefing. I further suspect that the pattern of such support was more pervasive than is currently known or acknowledged” (p. 113). Graham also says this structure of support was maintained by a nation-state [and no he does not say it was Iraq!].

Graham asserts that “after September 11, members of the Bush administration would claim that nobody could have imagined that planes might be used as weapons, during the course of our inquiry, we found that the possibility had been imagined, investigated, and interdicted more than once, and that in one case the Pentagon had been a target”! His examples include:


Algerian terrorists who in 1994 tried to fly an Air France plane into the Eiffel Tower;

Project Bojinka in 1995 to blow up 11 planes simultaneously and crash a twelfth into CIA headquarters and thirteenth into the Pentagon;

An August 2001 plot to fly a plane into a US embassy in Nairobi or bomb it from a plane (p. 81).

[Xithras]

10. You cannot possibly harden against every possible mode of attack on every potential target.

Case in point: It's still possible to purchase the materials for a large fertilizer bomb, drive it into DC in a rented UHaul, and set it off in literally HUNDREDS of potentially devastating locations. The NSA/CIA/DOD has known for decades that it's a possible attack vector, and yet they've done little to stop it outside of directly defending the White House and Capitol buildings. An Oklahoma style attack is still very feasible at countless other sites. And that's just DC. Imagine what you could do in New York, or San Francisco, or pretty much any other major city.

It's not possible to guard against every "possibility". You just have to be on guard against those that are likely.

The US air defenses were in the same standard configuration they'd been in since the end of the Cold War. There are only two countries within short striking range of us that possess the ability to do so, and neither Canada or Mexico is considered to be a threat. The countries that ARE potentially a threat are sufficiently far away that we would detect them at least a couple of hours from our borders. That's enough time to fuel up and launch most of the U.S. Air Force, and to meet the enemy in the air before they ever had a chance to cast a shadow on our soil.

You also have to remember that, in spite of the few alerts that you cited, airborne terrorism on a global scale was at its lowest level in decades. In fact, except for the blip of 9/11, airborne terrorism has dropped off continuously since the early 1980's. You were actually LESS likely to be hijacked on September 10, 2001 than you were on September 10, 1971. That fact heavily colored any threat assessments.

[Myrina]

12. Fascinating because that very scenario was used ...

... in one of those 'angry terrorist make things go boom' action flicks of the mid 90's.

I'm searching for the name as I type. Will edit to add.

[happyslug]

11. The big "Threat" prior to 9/11 was a Soviet bomber, and that is what the Air Force trained for

You do as you are trained, and from the 1950s to the 1990s the big fear (beside missiles) was an bomber coming in from Russia. Thus when the Air Force were notified of a problem in the air, they resorted to what they had been trained to do for 40 years, head out to the Atlantic and intercept the bomber. The problem was the plane was coming from the direction of West Virginia not the Atlantic. After 9/11 the Air Force changed its training program for the East Coast.

[DeSwiss]

13. +1000