{"id":1830,"date":"2010-02-04T14:33:43","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T18:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/?p=1830"},"modified":"2010-03-10T16:35:41","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T20:35:41","slug":"9-11-the-battlefield-attack-counterattack-and-operation-noble-eagle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/?p=1830","title":{"rendered":"9-11: The Battlefield; Attack, Counterattack, and Operation Noble Eagle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of my first posts was an initial Framework for Analysis<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 The premise was the universally accepted fact that there was an event on September 11, 2001.\u00a0 I developed a neutral framework that allowed anyone to present a body of evidence that included pre-facto, facto, and post-facto information to support their definition of the event.\u00a0 No one has set forth a credible thesis that the event was anything other than a terrorist attack because there is no body of evidence to support a different conclusion.<\/p>\n

The body of evidence assessed by both the Congressional Joint Inquiry and the 9-11 Commission is convergent and conclusive that the event of 9-11 was a terrorist attack.\u00a0 Therefore, I used the framework for analysis to outline the basics of the event as a terrorist attack in my first article.<\/p>\n

In this article, I will describe the attack in more detail and will also examine the Nation’s response.\u00a0 I will again identify the battle commanders and will establish the battlefield.\u00a0 Then we will discuss the attack and the government’s counterattack.\u00a0 Finally, I will set the stage for the Nation’s transition to Operation Noble Eagle.\u00a0 The history of that operation is being written by United States Air Force historians.<\/p>\n

The Battlefield and the Battle Commanders
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

On 9-11, nineteen terrorists commandeered four aircraft to mount a multi-prong attack against the National Airspace System (NAS), the battlefield.\u00a0 The NAS is a component of the larger National Transportation System.\u00a0 The attack also impacted at least three other national systems; defense, preparedness (emergency response), and policy (continuity of government).\u00a0 In this article I will focus on the NAS and one defense component, the U. S. air defense system.<\/p>\n

The NAS is operated by the Federal Aviation Agency’s (FAA) Air Traffic Control System Command Center (Herndon Center), commanded by a National Operations Manager (NOM).\u00a0 Benedict (Ben) Sliney was the NOM on 9-11.<\/p>\n

The NAS is defended by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which is divided into regions, one of which was the Continental U. S. Region (CONR). \u00a0 The east coast of the U. S. was the responsibility of one of CONR’s sectors, the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS).\u00a0 Air Force Colonel Robert Marr commanded NEADS on 9-11.<\/p>\n

Sliney and Marr were the nation’s battle commanders that day.\u00a0 Given that the attack on 9-11 was a battle in a larger war<\/strong> <\/a>against terror, Sliney and Marr were the highest level personnel who could take any timely action that morning.\u00a0 As we have discussed elsewhere in a series of articles on Chaos Theory, information did not flow concurrently to Sliney and Marr, or between them.\u00a0 They never talked to each other during the battle.<\/p>\n

The Flow of Information<\/strong><\/p>\n

The battle commanders did not talk to each other for two primary reasons.\u00a0 First, as we have discussed elsewhere, Boston Center (ZBW) preempted the hijack protocol and, in the terminology of Chaos Theory, established ZBW and NEADS as “strange attractors<\/strong><\/a>,” the focal points for the exchange of relevant information.<\/p>\n

Second, no one at a higher level, in particular the battle managers, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, USAF, at CONR, and Jeff Griffith at FAA Headquarters, had the situational awareness to force the flow of information to be\u00a0 between NEADS and Herndon Center.\u00a0 A chart<\/a><\/strong> I prepared while on the Commission Staff illustrates the flow of information to and from NEADS, during the period 9:21 to 10:22.\u00a0 Note that the flow of information during the time that AA 77 and UA 93 were an issue was between NEADS, primarily the identification technicians, and the regional air traffic control centers.<\/p>\n

The Attacker’s Tactical Advantage<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the strategic level, the hijacker planners achieved a basic principle of war, surprise.\u00a0 The surprise was so complete that the attack proceeded as planned until the passengers and crew aboard UA 93 learned what was happening. At the tactical level, the hijackers got within the government’s decision cycle and stayed there for most of the battle.\u00a0 In the vernacular, the government was always playing ‘catch up ball.’<\/p>\n

The counter attack gained its only tactical advantage when the Langley fighters established a combat air patrol (CAP) over the Nation’s capital.\u00a0 According to the 9-11 Commission Report: “At 9:46 the Command Center updated FAA headquarters that United 93 was now ‘twenty-nine’ minutes out of Washington D.C.”\u00a0 The CAP began at 10:00; the projected UA 93 arrival was 10:15.<\/p>\n

The Attack<\/strong><\/p>\n

The attack lasted for four hours and 18 minutes, beginning at 5:45 a.m. when Mohammed Atta and one accomplice entered the NAS at Portland, Maine and ending at 10:03 a.m. when UA 93 plummeted to earth near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Dulles, Boston, and Newark airports were the primary line of departure, and all four targeted planes were scheduled to take off in a short time span centered on the eight o’clock hour.\u00a0 I have speculated elsewhere that Atta’s entry into the NAS at Portland was a preliminary line of departure, simply a “Plan B,” a contingency to ensure that if all else failed, he and one accomplice could complete one prong of a planned four-prong attack.<\/p>\n

The attack had a northern and a southern component, each two-pronged.\u00a0 In the language of Chaos Theory, that unfolded as a nonlinear double bifurcation which overwhelmed a nation determined to follow existing linear response systems.<\/p>\n

The Tactics<\/strong><\/p>\n

The attack was a simple plan: commandeer four aircraft through violent, expedient means and fly them into buildings.\u00a0 The tactics were equally simple.\u00a0 A Commission Staff Report of August, 2004<\/a><\/strong> summarizes events concerning the takeover and control of each hijacked plane.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First, overwhelm the crew, kill the pilots, and then fly the planes to their targets.\u00a0 Second, manipulate the transponders to cause problems for air traffic control.\u00a0 A previous post, “Transponders and Ghosts<\/strong><\/a>,” is my assessment of that tactic.<\/p>\n

The hijackers had sufficient knowledge from their cross-country orientation flights as passengers to know the variances between scheduled and actual takeoff times.\u00a0 They tended to fly United for their orientation flights, so they also knew that it was possible for United passengers to listen to flight deck air traffic control communications on cabin channel 9.\u00a0 They also gained a sense of the habits and tendencies of cabin crews and knew they would be preoccupied once the seat belt light was turned off.\u00a0 Further, they purchased their tickets close enough to September 11 to have some degree of confidence from long-range weather forecasts that it would be a clear day on the East Coast.\u00a0 Their overall planning was meticulous, detailed, and, ultimately, successful.<\/p>\n

The final line of departure and point of most likely failure was security screening.\u00a0 We can estimate that the line crossing began around 7:00.\u00a0 There is no video record of when the hijackers passed through security at either Logan or Newark.\u00a0 The hijackers entering the NAS at Dulles passed through security screening beginning at 7:18 and began boarding about 30 minutes later.<\/p>\n

That allows us to speculate that the pass through security screening began about 30 minutes prior to boarding at the other two points of departure.\u00a0 That extrapolation means that al Shehhi and his crew passed through security prior to Atta and his crew; the UA 175 crew began boarding at 7:23, the AA 11 crew at 7:31.\u00a0 This analysis is supported by a three-minute 6:52 call to Atta from, most likely, al Shehhi.\u00a0 That was the “go” signal for al Shehhi to enter<\/strong> and Atta to re-enter<\/strong> the NAS.<\/p>\n

(Note: bolding above added on Feb 7, 2010.\u00a0 Atta had to pass through security a second time at Logan.)<\/p>\n

The sequence of entering the NAS at Dulles provides a glimpse into the detail that went into the plan.\u00a0 At Dulles, two hijackers preceded the designated pilot through the checkpoint, followed by the pilot and then the last two hijackers.<\/p>\n

That pattern was replicated with minor variation during the boarding process.\u00a0\u00a0 In each case, two hijackers preceded the designated pilot on board, followed in three cases by the pilot, either alone (AA 77) or with a colleague (AA 11 and UA 175), and then followed by the rest of each crew.\u00a0 The one exception was UA 93.\u00a0 Jarrah was the last to board.<\/p>\n

The first hijacker boarded at 7:23, UA 175, and the last boarded at 7:55, AA 77.\u00a0\u00a0 The boarding window of exposure across all four flights was just over 30 minutes.\u00a0 I estimate that the window of exposure to enter the NAS, to pass through security, was about the same.<\/p>\n

We can extrapolate that the pattern of passing through security at Logan and Newark was identical to Dulles: accomplices first, followed by the pilot and rest of the crew, in some order.\u00a0 Why might this be so?\u00a0 A simple answer is that the pattern did not expose the pilot immediately, allowing him the opportunity in every case to abort if his accomplices encountered difficulty.<\/p>\n

Once the hijackers were through security and on board the aircraft, three additional distinct, measurable\u00a0 events defined the attacker’s entry into the NAS; cabin door closed, push back, and liftoff.\u00a0 A detailed discussion of those events is beyond the scope of this paper.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that each event took the passengers and hijackers further away from local and airport security and to a point where the only security was provided by the air crew.\u00a0 None of the four hijacked aircraft had an air marshal on board.<\/p>\n

For our purposes in this paper, the time between push back and liftoff is defined as the delay time.\u00a0 According to the August 2004 Commission Staff Report the average delay time for AA 11, UA 175, and AA 77 was approximately fifteen minutes.\u00a0 By contrast the delay time for UA 93 was nearly three times as long, 42 minutes.\u00a0 That establishes a “delta,” a delay approximating 30 minutes, the difference between expectation and reality. The UA 93 prong of the southern attack lagged well behind plan, giving the government’s counter attack a chance, as we shall later see.<\/p>\n

AA 11 pushed back at 7:40 and lifted off at 7:59.\u00a0 UA 175 pushed back at 7:58 and lifted off at 8:14.\u00a0 AA 77 pushed back at 8:09 and lifted off at 8:20.\u00a0 UA 93 pushed back at 8:00 and lifted off at 8:42.<\/p>\n

Situation Summary
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point we need to pause for a moment and take stock of the situation.\u00a0 By 8:20,\u00a0 three hijacked aircraft were airborne; and the fourth, UA 93, would have been if we consider the “delta” of 30 minutes.\u00a0 At Herndon, Ben Sliney, in his first day as the NOM, was in a routine morning meeting.\u00a0 At NEADS, Col. Bob Mar was in the battle cab, an unusual situation predicated on scheduled exercise activity for the day.\u00a0 The battle cab was fully staffed, and he had a designated exercise mission crew commander, Major Dawne Deskins, USAF, to assist.<\/p>\n

No one at any level anywhere in the government, the airlines, or on board the four targeted aircraft was aware that the attack had been underway for well over two hours and that a well-timed assault was imminent.<\/p>\n

The Assault<\/strong><\/p>\n

AA 11. <\/strong>Atta struck first, quickly, a short 15 minutes or so after liftoff.\u00a0 Within no more than three or four minutes, his crew secured the cockpit and Atta was in command of and flying a domestic commercial airliner.\u00a0 A few moments later, he announced his success to the NAS, “we have some planes.”<\/p>\n

Some hold that announcement to be evidence of Atta’s poor skills and ineptitude.\u00a0 I find that position ethnocentrically deceptive and a gross underestimation of the terrorist threat on that day and in general.\u00a0 I hold, based on Atta’s demonstrated ability to plan in detail, that his broadcast was intentional, for two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, it was possible that al Shehhi could hear him on cabin channel 9 aboard UA 175.\u00a0 There is no evidence that he did, but we do know that Atta’s transmissions “on frequency” were heard by the UA 175 crew; AA 11 and UA 175 were on the same frequency during the time span of Atta’s transmissions. The UA 175 pilot\/co-pilot reported the fact to New York Center as soon as the plane was handed off by Boston Center.\u00a0 Second, I credit Atta with wanting the NAS to know there “were some planes,” to introduce uncertainty into the system, chaos if you will.<\/p>\n

UA 175. <\/strong>UA 175 lifted off at about the time the assault began on AA 11.\u00a0 Al Shehhi waited until the plane was in New York Center airspace before he struck.\u00a0 He would have known that fact by listening to cabin channel 9.\u00a0 Further, my assessment is that the plan was to hijack each plane in the airspace of a different NAS air control center.<\/p>\n

Al Shehhi’s crew assaulted the cockpit immediately after the crew had made its report to New York Center, 28 minutes after liftoff.\u00a0 As was the case with AA 11, al Shehhi was in command of UA 175 within minutes, certainly by 8:46 when the transponder code changed concurrent with the impact of AA 11 into the World Trade Center north tower.\u00a0 The code changed again within a minute.<\/p>\n

I asked the UA senior pilot to demonstrate changing the transponder code on a similar aircraft, made available for us to explore, guided by the senior pilot.\u00a0 The transponder knobs were arranged as two stacks of two each.\u00a0 The senior pilot demonstrated a two-step process.\u00a0 The first step changed the first and third digits; the second and fourth digits then defaulted to zero.\u00a0 The second step changed the second and fourth digits.\u00a0 The new codes for UA 175 were 3020 and 3321, respectively.\u00a0 UA 175 morphed in the air traffic control system to be a transponding intruder.<\/p>\n

AA 77. <\/strong>Hanjour’s crew assaulted the cockpit a little over 30 minutes after liftoff.\u00a0 There is no known correlation to the takeovers of AA 11 and UA 175, but AA 77 was hijacked soon after the takeover of UA 175 and at about the time that New York Center knew it had a problem with UA 175.\u00a0 As with the other flights, the takeover was swift and sure.\u00a0 Hanjour was in command by at least 8:56, when the transponder was turned off.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that the hijackers knew that a transponder turned off during a turn would cause the problems it did for Indianapolis Center.\u00a0 The tactic was likely simply one in a series of distinct transponder manipulations designed to present a different problem set for each of four air traffic control centers.\u00a0 In this case, the plane was assumed lost and reported as such to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center.<\/p>\n

UA 93. <\/strong>Jarrah was the most disadvantaged of all the hijacker pilots.\u00a0 He had only three accomplices, his plane was over 40 minutes late in departing, and he and his crew waited an additional 46 minutes to assault the cockpit.<\/p>\n

The assault occurred around 9:28 and, as in the other three cases, was swift and sure.\u00a0 Within a few minutes, Jarrah was in command.\u00a0 He turned off the transponder well after the turn back east, which presented little problem to Cleveland Center in maintaining spatial continuity on the aircraft.\u00a0 Cleveland Center successfully used the same tactic which Boston Center tried, without success, planes in the air to sight and report UA 93’s position.<\/p>\n

We can extrapolate that had UA 93 departed on time his takeover would have been virtually time-concurrent with the takeover of AA 77.<\/p>\n

Assault Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

In every case, the cockpit was secured by the hijackers within a few minutes, at most five and, more likely, two to three.\u00a0 In each case, the transponder was manipulated differently, each manipulation presenting a different situation to the NAS.\u00a0 With the flights commanded by terrorist pilots, it was left to their accomplices to control the cabin.\u00a0 Three crews did so successfully; the fourth did not.<\/p>\n

We do not know what the hijackers expected by way of a counterattack or if they expected one at all.\u00a0 We do know the details of the counterattack and we turn to Chaos Theory for our discussion.<\/p>\n

Chaos Theory<\/a> and the Counterattack<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chaos\u00a0 is deterministic.\u00a0 It is not random and can be bounded.\u00a0 One key to managing chaos, therefore, is to reduce the bounds and concurrently to limit uncertainty.\u00a0 Chaos is also self organizing and information flow in a chaotic situation follows the path of least resistance.\u00a0 Another key to managing chaos is to direct the flow of information to those who can take coordinated action, in this case Herndon Center and NEADS.<\/p>\n

Herndon Center was established to manage chaos on a daily basis. One of its main concerns is weather, and it is no accident that one of the key positions on the Center floor is Severe Weather.\u00a0 Intuitively Herndon Center knew that the flap of a butterfly’s wings somewhere would bring instability to the NAS.\u00a0 Herndon Center had procedures in place to manage chaos.<\/p>\n

NEADS was also established to manage chaos; it never knew what any given day’s activity would bring.\u00a0 As with Herndon Center, NEADS had procedures in place to manage chaos.<\/p>\n

I know of no evidence that anyone in the government or in the military had ever introduced NEADS and Herndon Center to each other prior to 9-11.\u00a0 NORAD exercise scenarios speak to the testing of command and control procedures with “FAA,” but nothing apparently happened to cause the NOM and NEADS commander to pick up the phone and talk to each other.\u00a0 They certainly did not do so on the morning of 9-11.<\/p>\n

Procedures<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ben Sliney and his NAS managers had at least three procedures available to them to manage chaos: ground stops, airborne inventories, and ACARS messages to cockpits.\u00a0 Herndon Center deferred to the airlines in the latter case.<\/p>\n

Colonel Marr had specific activity centers whose sole reason for existence was to reduce uncertainty.\u00a0 Foremost were the identification technicians, dedicated enlisted women and men who were under the clock to identify unknowns by reaching out to whoever had actionable information.\u00a0 He also had surveillance technicians, equally dedicated enlisted men and women who were also under time constraints to track unknowns, given actionable information.\u00a0 Finally, he had weapons controllers and a senior director, experienced officers, whose job was to scramble, vector, and control air defense aircraft to targets provided to them.<\/p>\n

The Counterattack<\/strong><\/p>\n

The counterattack began at 8:25 when Boston Center declared AA 11 to be hijacked.\u00a0 It ended 95 minutes later, at 10:00, when the Langley fighters established a combat air patrol over the nation’s capital.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, there was nothing more to counter–the attack had ended.<\/p>\n

Early indicators were picked up by both Boston Center and American Airlines; both followed existing linear processes, assuming that this was a singular event that would follow historic procedures. All that changed when Atta came on the air.<\/p>\n

Boston Center managers soon comprehended that their report of a hijack was not going to initiate hijack procedures to the military and they took matters into their own hands.\u00a0 Within 13 minutes, they had figured out how to reach NEADS, both through Otis TRACON and direct to NEADS.\u00a0 The air defense response began at 8:40, and planes were in the air 13 minutes later.<\/p>\n

The knowledge that there was a second plane came at 8:53 when New York Center realized it had a problem with UA 175.\u00a0 The plunge of UA 175 into the World Trade Center south tower caused the air traffic control system, working in concert with the Herndon Center, to immediately put in place a series of ground stops: Boston at 9:04, all traffic through\/to New York at 9:06, with both Centers at “ATC Zero” by 9:19.<\/p>\n

At that same time, United Airlines began sending specific warnings about cockpit intrusions to its airborne pilots.\u00a0 United 93 received such a message at 9:23, according to the dispatcher.\u00a0 Herndon Center considered such contact to be an airline prerogative and deferred to them.\u00a0 United Airlines dispatchers had begun contacting pilots as early as 9:03, but not initially with specific warnings.\u00a0 The first contact was to inform the pilots that aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n

With the knowledge that Atta said “we have some planes,” and with the emerging information that AA 77 had been lost by Indianapolis Center, Herndon Center initiated a nationwide ground stop at 9:25.\u00a0 An order for an airborne inventory swiftly followed.<\/p>\n

The airborne inventory confirmed that AA 77 was lost and soon surfaced that fact that UA 93 “had a bomb on board.”\u00a0 The counterattack was gaining momentum but was still outside the decision cycle of the attackers.<\/p>\n

With the further knowledge that a fast-moving unknown, in reality AA 77, was approaching the nation’s capital, Herndon Center, by 9:45, ordered all planes to land nationwide.\u00a0 That mission was accomplished by 12:16, according to the Administrator’s briefing book<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Herndon Center and the Air Traffic Control System used the tools at their disposal to try and bound the problem.\u00a0 They were outside the attackers’ decision cycle in every instance.\u00a0 They used one of the two keys we mentioned to manage chaos.\u00a0 They did not use the other: Herndon Center never talked to NEADS.\u00a0 They got no help from FAA Headquarters.\u00a0 FAA activated its tactical net (internal) at 8:50; it did not activate its primary net (external) until 9:20.\u00a0 By then it was too late.<\/p>\n

UA 93, A Closer Look<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Farmer in The Ground Truth <\/em>used a decreasing time approach–days, minutes, hours, seconds–to tell the story of 9-11.\u00a0 That approach is useful in telling the story of the counterattack as it concerned UA 93.\u00a0 Recall that earlier we established that the attackers got inside the nation’s decision-making cycle and stayed there throughout the attack.\u00a0 The case of UA 93 illustrates the point.<\/p>\n

Newark Airport was ground-stopped soon after 9:00. Following added March 10, 2010. The order to ground stop Newark came at 9:04:40 in the immediate aftermath of UA 175 hitting the WTC.\u00a0 The audio can be heard here.\u00a0090440 Newark Stop All Departures<\/a> <\/strong>UA 93 was still on the ground at 8:42, some 20<\/span> 23 minutes earlier.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

At 9:25, Herndon Center ordered an airborne inventory.\u00a0 UA 93 was hijacked beginning at 9:28, some three minutes later.\u00a0 At 9:26, UA 93 asked for confirmation about the cockpit warning message from United Airlines.\u00a0 A minute later, UA 93 responded to a routine air traffic control communication from Cleveland Center.\u00a0 Within a minute, the attackers began the assault on the crew and then the cockpit.<\/p>\n

The Herndon Center counterattack was well executed but never had a chance.\u00a0 The advantage of being inside the nation’s decisionmaking cycle gave the attackers enough of a time cushion to overcome the late departure of UA 93.\u00a0 The counterattack was gaining momentum, but it never caught up.\u00a0 That left the counterattack to NEADS and, ultimately, to the passsengers and crew themselves.<\/p>\n

The Air Defense Counterattack<\/strong><\/p>\n

The air defense backup was just four aircraft on the East Coast, two at Otis and two at Langley. No other air base, including Andrews, had the tactics, techniques, and procedures in place to respond on notice.\u00a0 Some argue that Andrews should have responded.\u00a0 The facts show otherwise.\u00a0 It took Andrews well over an hour from time of alert to get a pair of fighters airborne and closer to two hours to get air defense-capable fighters in the air.\u00a0 Even flying a circuitous route the Langley fighters accomplished the same task in 36 minutes.<\/p>\n

We discussed the air defense response extensively in the article; “NORAD; should it and could it have done more<\/a><\/strong>.”\u00a0 The only time that NEADS successfully tracked one of the hijacked aircraft was just before AA 77 slammed into the Pentagon.\u00a0 NEADS demonstrated that within minutes, given actionable information, it was capable–information and surveillance technicians and weapons directors working as a team–of tracking a primary-only aircraft and vectoring air defense aircraft to the target.<\/p>\n

The only other case where NEADS had any amount of time, again just minutes, was AA 11.\u00a0 It is clear from the NEADS tapes that they did find AA 11 moments before impact, but personnel had no time to establish a track.<\/p>\n

At the end of the battle, the Langley pilots were in place to respond to UA 93.\u00a0 Given that Cleveland Center and Herndon Center knew where the plane was, and given NEADS’ demonstrated performance in tracking AA 11 and AA 77, it is clear that once notified, NEADS would have established an actionable track on UA 93 long before it reached its target area.\u00a0 But NEADS knew nothing about UA 93 until after it plummeted to earth.<\/p>\n

Even if the FAA had notified NEADS in sufficient time, being in place and having the authority to do something are two very different things.\u00a0 It is clear that with sufficient notice NORAD could have done something; it is not clear that they should have, as they had no authority to act.<\/p>\n

The Aftermath<\/strong><\/p>\n

NORAD segued into Operation Noble Eagle, basically to protect the barn after the horse was stolen.\u00a0 There was no operational imperative for Noble Eagle other than the chilling words, “we have some planes.”\u00a0 That threat led to an extended operation to protect the nation’s skies in the near term, to watch over the rebuilding of the NAS in the mid term, and to continue air defense protection for the long term.\u00a0 Air Force historians will tell the story of Operation Noble Eagle; here we need describe only its genesis.<\/p>\n

Operation Noble Eagle, an extension of the existing air defense of the nation, began the moment Colonel Marr began looking for additional assets wherever he could find them.\u00a0 One of the first calls for additional help was to the Langley detachment asking how many planes they could sortie.\u00a0 The answer was that they had two more planes and one more pilot.\u00a0 That pilot, Quit 27, began Operation Noble Eagle when he lifted off, shortly after 9:30 on September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction One of my first posts was an initial Framework for Analysis.\u00a0 The premise was the universally accepted fact that there was an event on September 11, 2001.\u00a0 I developed a neutral framework that allowed anyone to present a body of evidence that included pre-facto, facto, and post-facto information to support their definition of the … Continue reading 9-11: The Battlefield; Attack, Counterattack, and Operation Noble Eagle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-framework-for-analysis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1830"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1910,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions\/1910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}