9/11 - Why no fighter jets?

Question

Maybe this is common knowledge, maybe I'm sounding a bit stupid. But looking at the flight paths from the web page below, the second the planes went off the flight paths, why were no jets scrambled? Especially the Pentagon crash. It did a u-turn in Ohio and headed back towards Washington. Surely, after the earlier crashes, alarm bells should have been going and jets should have been up, shooting the plane down over a safe place. It looks like it was around 45 mins from u-turn to crash, surely enough time to take the plane down?

I'm not on a conspiracy theory rant, just wondering why they didn't act when they could've have?

The web page with basic info and flight paths - http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/americas/2001/day_of_terror/the_four_hijacks/flight_77.stm

Thanks

Answer 1

"On Sept. 11, flight controllers suspected around 8:25 a.m. ET that American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston's Logan Airport had been hijacked, but NORAD wasn't notified until 8:40 a.m. — six minutes before the plane struck the World Trade Center in New York City. The exact position of the plane was still unknown at this time.



Post 9/11, NORAD would know instantly of a suspected hijacking."



"Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward."



In short, NORAD wasn't even networked to the FAA prior to 9/11 and it was only set up to track flights coming into the continental US from outside. (Cold war strategy)



On 9/11 - it seems that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

For what it's worth, despite allegations from conspiracy theorists - there was no stand down order - either for the Air Force or NORAD. There was just plain chaos as officials tried to determine what the hell was going on.

Answer 2

Why would they scramble jets for ?



There never has been a policy to scramble Air Force jets, for airline flights that went out of their flight path



or that were high jacked.



And what would be a safe place, over the eastern part of the country, to shoot an airliner down ?



What if the debris, landed on an elementary school or a children's hospital ?



Then there is the fact, that the Air force, just did not keep jets on alert all over the US.



In sept 2001, there were only 13 fighters in the US, at 7 AFB's that were on alert status.



And they were along the coast, to intercept aircraft flying towards the US, not inside the US.

Answer 3

For one thing the FAA has to inform the military, that was delayed 30 minutes. For another there were a grand total of 13 aircraft standing alert duty in the US. We don't keep jets on plus 5 and haven't since the end of the cold war. And last Norad's defense duties are concerned with the approaches not with the interior of the Country.

Answer 4

Yeah, those fighter jets ought to were ordered to dodge a extra extreme experience - be shot down. almost all Air rigidity Bases have a standby plane which will be observed as as a lot as do any such component at the moment global huge. regardless of the indisputable fact that this does beg the question of, if shot down, really that ought to land on a residential section and reason countless damage? it really is surely a tough undertaking.

Answer 5

O My GOD