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Norad

T.A.M. said:
lol...dead on.

TAM:)
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Well one of the problems is that CT sites are never updated, so when they go looking for information from those sites the information truely is from 2003 and never had any updates. The same is true in all CTs. Alius has a page claiming that the "photo" of Shepard's golf shot from his book (which is a constructed images rather then a real one) would have had to have been taken by Stuart Roosa by it can't have been because Roosa is in the image. They were told over 3 years ago when they put it up that a) Roosa was the CMP and LMP, the astronaut that landed with Shepard, was Dr Edgar Mitchell, and that b) the photo was a construct by the book's publishers and not an offical NASA image, but the claim is still on their site.
 
yes, and to make it even worse, the internet seems to be collect, and keep all of these things, like a gigantic horder/packrat.

TAM:)
 
T.A.M. said:
yes, and to make it even worse, the internet seems to be collect, and keep all of these things, like a gigantic horder/packrat.

TAM:)
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Quite true. People put up sites on free hosts and then never touch them again so they just sit there forever.
 
I'll be happy to clarify some issue with anyone who still has questions about the performance of the Air Defense System on September 11.

Please phrase your response as numbered straight-forward questions, so I can give you direct straight-forward answers. Be precise with you questions, and if necessary ask multiple questions. You are welcome to respond with additional questions once I have answered the initial ones.

At the first sign that you are failing to register what I am telling you (for example reframing previously-answered questions in a new way, or basing new questions on facts I have demonstrated false in previous answers) I will cease with educating you on this matter as you will have shown you have no interest in truth, and only in "stirring the pot".

The ball is in your court.

(Questions are open to anyone).
 
I have one, but screw the numbering etc.

Have you bothered to make up a timeline including all the stuff you have done like when the phone calls telling NORAD came in, when the phone calls from the planes came in, when NORAD did stuff, and when the Airlines told the FAA their planes had crashed. I think it'd be pretty handy. I was going to look through a heap of your threads to see if I could pull it all out, but figured I ask first.
 
gumboot, I will attempt to.
It was known a plane was off course and not responding (and planes can be tracked even with a transponder off) at what time?
Planes hit the towers, and a third was flying toward capitol hill.
When was norad first alerted and when did they get a plane up?
Thanks.
How long between first known plane off course and liftoff?
 
psy kick said:
gumboot, I will attempt to.
It was known a plane was off course and not responding (and planes can be tracked even with a transponder off) at what time?
Planes hit the towers, and a third was flying toward capitol hill.
When was norad first alerted and when did they get a plane up?
Thanks.
How long between first known plane off course and liftoff?
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Try checking out this thread (which ironically almost answer my question too. :))
 
It doesn't answer mine (not in a good way!) Planes can be tracked without their transponders.
 
Have you tried tracking a blip in a see of 5000 blips? I wouldn't pretend it's easy until you actually try it. Another big assumption being made here is that as soon as NORAD is alerted of the first hijacking, the automatically know about all the other planes as well. When they first learned about flight 11 (which was 10 minutes before impact) they didn't know about flight 93. So you can't start the clock on flight 93 at the first notification of flight 11 being hijacked, etc.
 
psy kick said:
It doesn't answer mine (not in a good way!) Planes can be tracked without their transponders.
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To a point.

Flight AA11 was lost on Secondary Radar at 0813 but was tracked on Primary Radar by Boston until it dropped below their Radar level and into the clutter of NYC. Boston informs NORAD at 0837. They had issues trying to match the blip on their screens to the blip on NORADs meaning NORAD never determined where AA11 was but they launch fighters anyway at 0854, AA11 hits WTC seconds later.

Flight UA175 never turned off its Transponder, it merely switched the band. It was tracked by NY Control on Secondary Radar until impact. NY didn't inform NORAD until 0903, at the same time as it crashed.

Flight AA77 turned off its Transponder in an area where the Primary Radar had a black spot. These occur all over the US for various reasons due to the way the system is stitched together. This meant that when the ATC went from secondary to primary there was no blip and initially they assumed it had crashed (Gumboot: a question here. In your Timeline you have that this occured a 0854 and that at 0856 they realised it was a hijack and alerted the FAA. Could you recheck this, I thought they took longer than two minutes to discover this error.) By the time they checked for a hijack, they coildn't locate the blip along its last flightpath, the plane had turned around. Using tapes stored by the radar system the FAA has been able to recreate the entire path of 77. Indianapolis doesn't inform NORAD, but they learn of it via a phone conversation at 0934.

I think that Flight UA93 was tracked on Secondary Radar until it crashed, but I may be wrong on that one. Initially the ATC didn't know which plane was hijacked mistaking the transmissions for Delta 1998. Ceveland didn't tell NORAD, but Boston heard that 1998 was a hijack which they reported to NORAD. NORAD wouldn't know about 93 until 1007, 4 minutes after 93 crashed.
 
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psy kick said:
It doesn't answer mine (not in a good way!) Planes can be tracked without their transponders.
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The transponder identifies that plane with the radar track on screen. If the transponder is switched off then the track becomes one of many on a screen. If someone is watching that track when the transponder is switched off then they can continue to look at that track and follow it. If they are not watching that track when the transponder is switched off and then someone tells them to go look at their screen and find that aircraft again it is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack.
 
I'm in Cleveland, and i think it was mistakenly announced on our news that one of the planes had landed in Cleveland and then went on again. Obviously not, but there was a lot of confusion that day.
Another, unrelated to Norad qestion:
Why did the president keep flying around instead of addressing the troubled citizens?
 
psy kick said:
I'm in Cleveland, and i think it was mistakenly announced on our news that one of the planes had landed in Cleveland and then went on again. Obviously not, but there was a lot of confusion that day.
Another, unrelated to Norad qestion:
Why did the president keep flying around instead of addressing the troubled citizens?
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He was told to. That is the point of Airforce One.
 
psy kick said:
I'm in Cleveland, and i think it was mistakenly announced on our news that one of the planes had landed in Cleveland and then went on again. Obviously not, but there was a lot of confusion that day.
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It was confussion based on two other planes. One was Delta 1989 and the other was a NASA plane that was unable to leave because of the take off ban, so returned to a hanger for the passangers to disembark.

Another, unrelated to Norad qestion:
Why did the president keep flying around instead of addressing the troubled citizens?
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It was the safest place for him to be.
 
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psy kick said:
I'm in Cleveland, and i think it was mistakenly announced on our news that one of the planes had landed in Cleveland and then went on again. Obviously not, but there was a lot of confusion that day.
Another, unrelated to Norad qestion:
Why did the president keep flying around instead of addressing the troubled citizens?
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When an attack of that magnitude occurs, the president's location becomes out of his hands. He is subject to continuity of goverment contingency plans that will take him the place where he is safest. In many instances, the absolute safest place is onboard AF1 with its advanced C2, countermeasures, and obviously its fighter escort.

If the capitol building had been struck, there would be no way to guarantee his safety if one of the planes had hit it. He would have been most likely underground in the comms facilities, and there MAY have been a Stinger missile detail on the roof - but a Stinger is NOT going to take down a low-flying airliner on a collision course. It'd be about as effective as trying to shoot it down with a shotgun even if they got lucky and fragged an engine or two.

Nope, moving POTUS to AF1 was the correct tactical call in that situation. Now as to why he did not address the nation whilst in flight, anything you or I would have to say on the matter is absolute speculation - we weren't there.
 
And why he wasn't taken to the air immediately instead of waiting a long time after knowing of the attack in a school where he was known to be.?
 
psy kick said:
And why he wasn't taken to the air immediately instead of waiting a long time after knowing of the attack in a school where he was known to be.?
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Again, not his choice.

When the President is going somewhere the route to and from the location has to be approved, but only at the time of his travel. You can't just yank him out from where he was to a different location without making sure that the route and the new location are both secure. On 9/11 the school was a secure location and until they knew that both the Airport and the route to the Airport was secure and safe to use the USSS wasn't moving him.
 
PhantomWolf said:
On 9/11 the school was a secure location and until they knew that both the Airport and the route to the Airport was secure and safe to use the USSS wasn't moving him.
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Exactly. With the lack of tactical intelligence of exactly what the heck was going on at the time, there was an awful lot of audibles being called on the ground by the USSS. They didn't know whether or not an attempted assassination of POTUS was a part of the attack or not (and his appearance at the school WAS known) - and they were not going to move him one inch unless their transit defenses were in place. I would bet my whole paycheck on this - the convoy that initially took the president to the airport was probably the most heavily armed and escorted presidential convoy ever to move him from one place to another inside the US.

Pres. Bush conceivably COULD have countermanded the standing orders and moved immediately but he's known to defer to his advisors and in this case a hasty exit would have done more to create a panic. Plus you have to ask yourself this - what would having POTUS onboard AF1 and airborne have done to expedite air defenses from NORAD? He can't make them correlate tracks or scramble aircraft any faster than they did. Most likely a shootdown order would have to have come from him or a very ballsy subordinate at the Pentagon...but given that we know when the planes went down and when NORAD/NEADS were informed of them, POTUS and his embarked staff could not have made the situation go any smoother. In all likelihood, they would have only succeeded in complicating what had already become a giant soup sandwich.
 
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