it’s a day all Americans know changed the course of our daily
lives in US
The military has been monitoring the skies over the U.S. ever
since
“Our computer systems are bigger and better. … You should see all of the radars that are now hooked up. Everything the FAA sees, we see. We are much more actively involved in the identification of all aircraft in the United States,”
In NORAD personnal words: Maintain your vigilance. Maintain your professionalism. We’re here for a reason. We’ve evolved over the last 10 years to develop into an air defense organization that has a job not only in defending from attacks from the outside, but also for defending asymmetric threats like we – that occurred on 9/11. Just maintain your professionalism and I think everything will work out
The attacks on 9/11, that was a slap. That was a slap to us
__________
USDOD
It’s been 17 years since Sept. 11, when terrorists hijacked four
commercial airliners and flew them into New York’s iconic World Trade Center,
the Pentagon and a field in rural western Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000
U.S. citizens.
Whether the events of that day were etched in your memory
forever, or you were too young to understand it at the time, it’s a day all
Americans know changed the course of our daily lives.
New York Air National Guard Maj. Jeremy Powell was a 31-year-old tech
sergeant taking part in Exercise Vigilant Guardian when 9/11 occurred. He was
the first military person to learn about the hijackings, having taken the
initial call from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Boston center.
Master
Sgt. Stacia Rountree was a 23-year-old senior airman working as an
identification technician. Vigilant Guardian was her first major NORAD
exercise.
Like everyone else, Powell and Rountree remember that day
vividly. Here are some of the things I learned from them. Who knows – these
facts might be new to you, too.
There was a lot of initial confusion.
It took some time for NEADS (North East Air Defense Sector, now
Eastern Air Defense Sector) ) to realize 9/11 was a real-world scenario and not
part of the exercise. Once they did, there was even more confusion trying to
find the missing planes, which always seemed to be a step ahead of them.
“We were treating all the information we got as real-time, not
understanding that it was coming to us late,” said Rountree, who basically
became a liaison between the FAA and the military for the rest of that day.
“We were trying to figure out departure destination, how many
people were on board, how big the aircraft actually was, and factoring all of
that stuff in. That way the [F-15 and F-16] fighters, when they got airborne,
would know that they had the right plane in sight,” she said.
”I stayed on the phone for 12-14 hours, just calling all the
bases and asking how quick the fighters could get armed, get airborne, and if
they could go to a certain location,” Powell said.
There wasn’t much time between the first FAA call and the first
crash.
Just 10 minutes elapsed between the time Powell took the first
call to NEADS about the hijackings to when the first plane, American Airlines
Flight 11, hit the North Tower – not enough time to get fighters into the air.
According to the 9/11 Commission’s report, the call from the
FAA’s Boston center came into NEADS at 8:37 a.m.
“8:46 is when I scrambled the first fighters [from Otis Air
National Guard Base, Massachusetts], and then 8:53 they were airborne,” Powell
said.
But it was too late to help American 11, which hit the World
Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:47 a.m.
There were several more reports of hijackings that day.
By the time the day was over, Rountree said there were probably
19 or 20 planes that she and the other ID techs had investigating as possible
hijackings. Only the initial four – American 11, United Airlines Flight 175,
American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93 – were the real deal.
At one point, there were reports that American 11 was still
airborne. Air traffic controllers likely confused it with American 77, which
was somewhere over Washington, D.C., air-space. Rountree said she tried to
contact the FAA’s Washington Center to get a position on it, while Langley Air
Force Base fighters were trying to get to the capital.
“It was probably only a couple of minutes, but to me, it seemed
like a lifetime. Then we got the reports that the plane hit the Pentagon,”
Rountree remembered. “I was actively trying to find that plane, and I felt that
we may have had some time. We didn’t.”
There had been discussions of fighter pilots making the ultimate
sacrifice.
The fighters were meant only to shadow potentially hijacked
planes, but Rountree said there was discussion of those pilots making the
ultimate sacrifice.
“In case their weapons were out, and if we would have had to use
force, they were discussing whether or not those guys would have to go
kamikaze,” she said, meaning some pilots were considering risking their own
lives by using their planes to stop hijacked jetliners. “It was scary, when you
thought about the possibility of them having to do that.”
There was a heartbreaking feeling of hope for Flight
93.
While all of the crashes were shocking, Rountree said that, for
her, United 93 was the saddest. They had been trying to find the plane on radar
and had called the FAA to get an updated position.
“They said, ‘It’s down,’ and we were thinking it landed,”
Rountree remembered. But when they asked for landing confirmation, the info was
clarified – it crashed. “For us, you had that glimmer of hope, and then… .”
NEADS was evacuated on Sept. 12 thanks to an unknown aircraft.
The day after 9/11, NEADS was evacuated because there was an
unknown plane up at the time, and no one was supposed to be airborne.
“There were fighters coming back from air patrol over NYC … so
our commander had them go supersonic over to where we were so they could figure
out what it was. They thought it was heading toward us,” Rountree said.
It turned out to be a harmless floatplane, and it was forced to
land.
9/11 changed the role of the air defense sectors.
“Back then, the primary focus was that we were looking out at
people coming to attack us from the outside,” Powell said. “We weren’t really
focused on the inside.”
“Nobody thought that somebody would go ahead and utilize planes
that were in the U.S. to do something, so our radar coverage was indicative of
that,” Rountree explained.
“Now, our coverage has definitely increased. It’s night and day
versus then.”
The sector now has new and evolving technology.
“Our computer systems are bigger and better. … You should see
all of the radars that are now hooked up. Everything the FAA sees, we see. We
are much more actively involved in the identification of all aircraft in the
United States,” Powell said.
Before 9/11, Rountree said they couldn’t always get in touch
with critical personnel at the FAA centers. Now they can.
“We really didn’t have to talk to the various Air Traffic
Control Center supervisors. Now, we have instant lines with everybody,” she
said.
The military has been monitoring the skies over the U.S. ever
since.
“A lot of people didn’t even realize that we were probably
there, or what we even do, which could be a good thing,” Powell said. “It
reinforces the idea that somebody’s always watching you, especially in the sky.
The FAA’s there – that is their airspace – but the military is, too.”
Never Forget
__________
9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
Of the many unanswered questions about the attacks of September
11, one of the most important is: Why were none of the four planes
intercepted? A rough answer is that the failure of the US air defenses
can be traced to a number of factors and people. There were policy
changes, facility changes, and personnel changes that had recently been made,
and there were highly coincidental military exercises that were occurring on
that day. But some of the most startling facts about the air defense
failures have to do with the utter failure of communications between the agencies
responsible for protecting the nation. At the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), two people stood out in this failed chain of
communications. One was a lawyer on his first day at the job, and another
was a Special Operations Commander who was never held responsible for his
critical role, or even questioned about it.
The 9/11 Commission wrote in its report that “On 9/11, the
defense of U.S. airspace depended on close interaction between two federal
agencies: the FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
The 9/11 Commission report (hereafter, “the report”) indicated
that the military was eventually notified about all the hijackings, but none of
those notifications were made in time to intercept the hijacked aircraft
One of the most glaring examples was demonstrated by the failure
of FAA HQ to request military assistance for the fourth hijacking, that of
Flight 93.
On page 28, the report says, “By 9:34, word of the hijacking had
reached FAA headquarters.” Despite this advance notice, Flight 93
“crashed” in Pennsylvania sometime between 10:03 and 10:07.
FAA HQ got plenty of notice of the four hijacked planes, but
failed to do its job
To put this in perspective, at 9:34 it had been over 30 minutes
since a second airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC). It
was known that a third plane was hijacked, and it was about to crash into the
Pentagon. Everyone in the country knew we were under a coordinated
terrorist attack via hijacked aircraft because, as of 9:03, mainstream news
stations including CNN had already been televising it.
______________
Denver Post - NORAD
Originally published Sept. 13, 2001
By Mike McPhee
The North American Air Defense Command, which monitors the nation’s airspace
from inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, learned of a plane hijacking
10 minutes before the plane slammed into the World Trade Center.
Capt. Adrian Craig, spokeswoman for NORAD, confirmed the 10-minute warning
but declined to say what action NORAD or the Air Force took once it knew a
plane had been commandeered Tuesday morning.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that the
transponder, a device that alerts air traffic controllers of a plane’s
identification and location, had been turned off on American Airlines Flight
11, the first of two planes to slam into the World Trade Center.
But Craig said it was not the disconnected transponder that alerted NORAD.
She declined to elaborate.
Meanwhile, the Air Force said it is flying fully loaded F-15 and F-16
fighter jets to patrol the skies over the nation’s major metropolitan areas,
including Denver and Colorado Springs. The flights will continue indefinitely.
“Rest assured, they’re equipped and ready to do business,” Craig said.
Numerous Denver residents reported hearing the warplanes overhead late
Tuesday and early Wednesday.
The nearly 29,000 military personnel based in Colorado remained on
heightened alert Wednesday, said officials at Fort Carson Army Base and
Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs.
No troop movements or orders for movements were released to the public.
But a C-5 military cargo jet from Travis Air Force Base in California
arrived at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora on Wednesday evening to ferry an
urban search-and-rescue team to New York, an Air Force spokesman said.
An Army spokesman, Sgt. 1st Class James Yocum, said troop movements
typically aren’t disclosed until a few hours before the troops leave.
An Air Force spokesman, Staff Sgt. Gino Mattorano, said personnel at
Peterson Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Buckley Air Force
Base in Aurora and the 21st Space Wing remain on “Force Protection and
Information Condition.”
Only mission-essential personnel are reporting for duty until further
notice, he said.
The Air Force Air Mobility Command center at Scott Air Force Base in
Illinois began dispatching military aircraft with supplies and rescue teams to
New York and Washington, D.C., Lt. Col. Brad Peck said.
“We’re moving predominantly medical supplies, humanitarian supplies and
urban search-and-rescue teams,” he said. “We have set up a port mortuary in
Dover, Del., for the victims in the Pentagon. We also are providing aeromedical
evacuation planes to evacuate the wounded out of New York. They are basically
airborne ambulances.”
__________
IN THEIR OWN WORDS (NORAD)
Sept. 7, 2011 —
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. - William Glover is
currently the N2C2 Operations Support Director for the North American Aerospace
Defense Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was an
Air Force lieutenant colonel in charge of NORAD Air Defense Operations and was
in the Cheyenne Mountain operations center on that day. He sat down with NORAD
and USNORTHCOM Public Affairs to talk about his experiences on the day of the
attacks.
Q: Tell us a little about your job here at NORAD and USNORTHCOM.
A: My job now is to look after the NORAD equities and the N2C2,
the NORAD and NORTHCOM Command Center. Whenever the general officers here in
the building provide guidance on how the crews need to operate, I transfer that
guidance into checklists and TTPs and that sort of thing so that the crews
understand how we need to operate. On 9/11, my job was Chief, Air Defense
Operations. I worked up at Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. I was in charge
of the Air Warning Center, which had five crews, and so my job was to maintain
the standardization of operations for the NORAD Ops Center.
Q: Now by what could be called a stroke of luck, everyone you
would need to be in the Mountain on 9/11 was already there the morning of 9/11.
Can you talk about why that was?
A: When people ask me that question, I say, “We were lucky,” you
know, and I get this funny look. We were lucky from the fact that we were in
the middle of a NORAD-wide exercise, and that NORAD-wide exercise had been
going on since the Thursday prior. What that means to us is all the folks in
Building 1470 at the time, all the directorates such as Operations, Logistics,
Security, all those folks were up in the Mountain on an exercise posture. The
lucky part was that these are the same folks that we would bring up in case of
contingencies or in time of going to war. So, in reality, I had all the guys up
into the NORAD Battle Management Center that I needed to conduct the exercise
as well as the contingency operations that happened on 9/11. So what we had to
do was throw the exercise books away and pick up our wartime books and then go
to work.
Q: Another spot of good fortune came from a rather unlikely
source. You mentioned that the Russians did something significant.
A: It’s amazing. At the same time we were conducting this
exercise, the Russians were conducting one of their own. But after the United
Flight 93 went into Shanksville, Penn., the Russians notified us that they were
stopping their exercise because they understood the magnitude of what had
happened to us in the United States. They didn’t want any questions, they
didn’t want us worrying about what they would be doing or entering our Air
Defense Identification Zone. So that was amazing to me, personally, the fact
that they stopped their exercise and, #2, that they told us that they were
going to stop the exercise.
Q: Part of NORAD’s problem on 9/11 was literally the Command’s
outlook. We were looking outward. How did that hamper us and what has been done
since to fix that?
A: It’s important to understand that the job of NORAD at the
time, on 9/11, was to look for threats from outside our countries. We were to
tasked to provide warning of attacks both missile and aircraft as it occurred,
coming into the United States and Canada. And because of that mission, all of
our radars were located along the periphery of the United States and Canada. We
had quite a few radars, numbering over 100 radars looking outward. On 9/11,
what we found out was that we needed radar coverage in the interior of the
United States. And this was demonstrated when the hijackers turned off the
transponders, which is an identification code that the FAA uses to identify
these airliners, we couldn’t see them anymore, so that posed a big problem for
us. We knew the FAA had around 100 long and short range radars in the interior
and we had to figure out how to connect to them. Through some fantastic
innovation by our Continental NORAD Region personnel, we were able to purchase
off-the-shelf software we were able to connect to those interior FAA radars and
basically had the same air picture the FAA had.
Q: And it’s significant when you talk about the number of
aircraft we’re talking about that’s flying at any one time.
A: That number is staggering, especially to the person that
doesn’t realize the number of registered general aviation aircraft and domestic
/ international passenger airliners. On one day – one given day – we have about
2,500 aircraft that fly into the Air Defense Identification Zone of both the
United States and Canada. That ADIZ is located about 200 miles from our shores
and is intended to give us plenty of time to detect the aircraft and determine
its identify. The 2500 number is significant because our NORAD Air Defense
Sectors are tasked with determining the identification of all those aircraft
entering the ADIZ and if we can't, then we may have to launch an armed fighter
to visually identify the aircraft to make sure there is no mal intent. Our
partnership with the FAA helps us tremendously with this task. The FAA shares
flight plan data with us so we can correlate our radar contacts with expected
timings and locations. So we’re looking at all the flight plans of all 2,500 of
those aircraft that are flying in to make sure that they are who they are.
Number two, that’s only aircraft flying into the United States
and Canada. On the interior of the United States, for example, there could be
up to 10,000 aircraft just flying around. Of course, that depends on the
weather and how good the weather is or where they’re flying, but there could be
at least 10,000 airplanes flying at one time.
Q: When people think about the NORAD response, their mind
automatically goes to the fighters coming up alongside the wings. But NATO
stepped up and helped us by contributing another critical asset, and those were
the E-3 Sentries.
A: Yes, that was a much needed asset for us. NATO stepped up and
loaned us seven, we call them E-3’s, Airborne Warning and Control aircraft. And
because we did not have the interior radar coverage inside the U.S., we were
able to fly those E-3’s in certain locations and we could not only monitor the
– the aircraft – of civilian aircraft that were flying around the interior of
the United States, but they could also control our fighter aircraft that we had
flying around over major metropolitan areas.
Q: In the aftermath of the attack, NORAD assets were flying 24/7
and a new operation, Noble Eagle, was started. What is Noble Eagle and why is
it still significant today?
A: That’s true. On the 12th of September, Operation Noble Eagle
(“ONE”) was born. This new threat of civilian airliners being used as a weapon
required a new set of procedures and more assets to defend against. While our
mission did not change, our responsibilities had increased. O.N.E. gives
Commander NORAD the authority to go and investigate and look at these civilian
aircraft that might be attempting to attack the U.S. or Canada.
Q: How has NORAD changed since that day and how have these
changes affected the U.S. and Canada?
A: Our changes have been significant. As I mentioned earlier, we
were looking outward. We were looking for Cold War attacks, we were looking for
bombers, we were looking for air launched cruise missiles, and we were looking
for hijacked aircraft that could be heading toward the U.S. and Canada. But,
since 9/11, we’re now able to monitor aircraft that are flying in the interior
of the United States as well. But we needed more than a radar picture, we
needed a way to talk with our interagency partners in real time. In the months
after the Sep 11 attacks, the FAA developed a communications system called the
domestic events network. The D.E.N. allows us, NORAD, to communicate with the
FAA and other inter agency partners in real time. In the past, typically if
there was an issue onboard an aircraft, whether it was a fight or it was
someone who was drinking too much, that type of thing, those types of incidents
were worked by the airlines and the airline headquarters, and we were not
notified; sometimes the FAA wasn’t notified. But now with this new Domestic
Events Network, the pilots will call in issues that they have on their
aircraft. If they have somebody that’s getting into a fight or somebody that’s
trying to get into the cockpit, he will call his FAA controller who will
forward that information on the DEN and, on the DEN, everybody is listening.
Let’s just say it’s AIRLINE 101. We could dial in the AIRLINE 101 code, look on
our new system, figure out where that aircraft is in relationship to air bases,
and decide if we needed to scramble fighters or we needed to monitor that
aircraft. We didn’t have this prior to 9/11. Now we do, we have almost near
instantaneous situational awareness of where these aircraft are and what their
problem is. It is important to note that it is the synergy of all of our
interagency partners that make the skies safe to fly. It is not just NORAD.
Q: Now you’ve made it a point to go out and talk about 9/11 at
universities. What do you tell these students and why do you do this?
A: Well, both personal reasons and – and professional reasons.
I’m asked to go speak at Denver University. They want me to talk about my
personal observations of 9/11, and I’m happy to do that. They want me to talk
about how NORAD has improved since that point. For my personal observations, I
just like to point out that, on 9/11, we had about 50 individuals working in
the NORAD Battle Management Center in Cheyenne Mountain and watching those
individuals react to the airliners impacting the World Trade Center is
something I will never forget. I saw a full gamut of emotions in that room. I
saw some folks that were normally talkative as quiet as can be. I saw people
that normally don’t talk just start to be jittery, walk around, not knowing
what to do with themselves. I saw people reacting that normally don’t react
that particular way. It was amazing to me to see that. But what I did see was a
team coming together. They were professionals...They went to work to defend
their nation and they were able to work together as a team. As far as speaking
to the graduate level course at Denver University, on my last lecture, I looked
around the audience and I saw kids in there that I imagined to be somewhere
around 12 years old on 9/11. And so my thought was, “I hope we don’t forget.” I
hope we don’t forget what happened on 9/11 and how we have to work as a team,
not only as a team in that room on 9/11, but as a team to include our
interagency partners. And to that end, we have developed a great working
relationship with partners such as FAA, we’ve developed a great working
relationship with TSA and all those folks that support this nation's defense.
Because really, NORAD should be considered the last resort. If all of our
partners have done their job, then there’s no need for us to get airborne and
be prepared to intervene in a hijacked aircraft. So my point there to these
students is: It’s teamwork. It’s on everybody working together with their own
piece of the pie to make the nation secure. And that’s what I’m trying to teach
them.
Q: What stands out the most about that day to you?
A: Everybody has their own memories of that day. I will never
forget driving up to Cheyenne Mountain that day and I remember looking out at
the weather, and it was the most beautiful day I’d ever seen. There wasn’t a
cloud in the sky, and I was thinking, “Well, I sure don’t want to be at work
today.” And getting in and going and riding on the bus a third of a mile into
the Mountain and getting off the bus and walking into the NORAD Battle
Management Center to assume what I thought was going to be a normal day, which
changed almost immediately. But what stands out, again, is the ability of 50
individuals to come together as a team and – and do their job and I’ve got to
tell you, they didn’t want to go home. These folks were in there early, like at
6:00, and they didn’t want to go home. Our Commander at the time stuck his
noggin into the room and said, “Hey, we’ve gotta send these guys home because I
need ‘em fresh for tomorrow.” And that’s one of the thoughts that stands out to
me. Nobody wanted to go home. They wanted to get the job done, but they had to
be told to go home.
Q: It’s 10 years later. Osama bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda, the
argument is, is in ruins. Do you think the changes that have come to NORAD and
the United States security apparatus, do you think those are still necessary?
A: Oh, most definitely. The attacks on 9/11, that was a slap. That
was a slap to us. That was an attention getter for us that we had to be more
aware of what was going on in the air. We had to be more aware of people out
there that are that want to kill Americans. They want to kill, you know,
Canadians as well. And so I think what we’ve done in building relationships
with our federal interagency partners, building relationships with the local
law enforcement, is only for the better. I know that going through the airport
and having to go through all the TSA security is sometimes a pain in the
you-know-what, but I’ve gotta tell you we need it. We have to have that done if
we want to keep the skies secure and – and safer not only for yourself, but for
your family.
Q: If you could leave this interview with one message to
Americans and Canadians who fall under the NORAD umbrella, what would it be?
A: Maintain your vigilance. Maintain your professionalism. We’re
here for a reason. We’ve evolved over the last 10 years to develop into an air
defense organization that has a job not only in defending from attacks from the
outside, but also for defending asymmetric threats like we – that occurred on
9/11. Just maintain your professionalism and I think everything will work out.
Dr Kofi Annan served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN
Dr Kofi Annan's wife, Nane Maria Annan, lays a wreath during the burial service held at the Military Cemetery at Burma Camp in Accra
Honour guards carry the flag-draped casket of Kofi Annan
