{"id":346,"date":"2009-08-06T10:35:49","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T14:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/?p=346"},"modified":"2009-08-06T10:35:49","modified_gmt":"2009-08-06T14:35:49","slug":"9-11-norad-briefings-prior-to-may-23-2003-hearing-some-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/?p=346","title":{"rendered":"9-11: NORAD briefings prior to May 23, 2003 hearing, some comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned two briefings in the article “9-11: NORAD\u2019s Sudoku Puzzle; a briefing askew, an addendum” that NORAD knew about before the May 23, 2003 hearing.\u00a0 Thanks to some out of cycle work at NARA by paxvector <\/em>and History Commons those two briefings are now available on the web.\u00a0 Here<\/a> <\/strong>is Cheri Gott’s 2002 briefing to the Satellite Toolkit (STK) Conference.\u00a0 Here<\/strong><\/a> is her briefing to CONR to help prepare them for the hearing.<\/p>\n

It is clear from both briefings, based on 84th RADES radar data, that NORAD knew the true story of the Otis and Langley scrambles.\u00a0 They failed to tell that story at the first air defense hearing on May 23, 2003.\u00a0 We also learn from these briefings that a “scramble” does not mean aircraft were launched.<\/p>\n

A scramble defined<\/strong><\/p>\n

NORAD (Gott), on one sllide,\u00a0 provides researchers and historians the definition of a scramble:\u00a0 “Scramble = an order to get aircraft airborne as soon as possible.”\u00a0 The important point here is that a scramble does not mean that planes were necessarily ever launched.<\/p>\n

In my own work<\/a><\/strong> for the DoD Inspector General we examined the history of SEADS-directed scrambles concerning air activity over the Florida Straits concerning flight activity by the Brothers To The Rescue and Cuban response to that activity.\u00a0 We determined the universe of scrambles over a several-month period and then further refined the data to focus only on those cases in which air defense fighters actually launched.\u00a0 The number was quite small in comparsion to the number of “scrambles.”\u00a0 My recall is that many of the scramble orders were cancelled because the information was determined to be spurious before the air defense pilots could get airborne.<\/p>\n

A scramble order was and is a precautionary step, one in a sequence that can be stopped.\u00a0 In the case of the Mission Crew Commanders at SEADS their task was to issue the scramble order and then quickly seek authority to actually launch.\u00a0 The sequence of events on the morning of 9-11 was much the same.\u00a0 The Mission Crew Commander and Colonel Marr scrambled Otis and immediately sought approval to launch.\u00a0 General Arnold granted approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned two briefings in the article “9-11: NORAD\u2019s Sudoku Puzzle; a briefing askew, an addendum” that NORAD knew about before the May 23, 2003 hearing.\u00a0 Thanks to some out of cycle work at NARA by paxvector and History Commons those two briefings are now available on the web.\u00a0 Here is Cheri Gott’s 2002 briefing … Continue reading 9-11: NORAD briefings prior to May 23, 2003 hearing, some comments<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-23-2003-hearing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","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=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}