Making Our Skies Safer

Armen Keteyian Looks At Post-9/11 Changes In How We Secure Our Skies

(CBS)  Five years ago, on a morning marked by chaos and cries for help from the cockpit of one of the planes hijacked on Sept. 11, the two federal agencies charged with defending our skies — the FAA and North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD — were without a direct line of communication. As CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports, they were essentially flying blind during 109 minutes of terror.

"We could not see what the FAA could see. That was the main stumbling point, if you like," Gen. Eric Findley says.

Findley was in the "hot seat" that sunny September day, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain at NORAD's top-secret defense site.

Three of those planes, including United Flight 93, went down without any sort of military response.

"It's not satisfactory, it's not a success. No. But that was not our mission on that particular day," Findley says.

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Read Keteyian's reporter's notebook

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For decades, NORAD had been fixated on threats coming from outside our borders — a Cold War mindset that no longer applied.

But that has changed.

The U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, is the New World Order of the nation's defense. Inside NORTHCOM's nerve center, dozens of military officers and civilians now sit side by side, tracking all things domestic — air, land and sea — and are directly linked to 150 other command centers involved in public safety.

None of this communication was in place five years ago.

Today, it all begins with DEN — short for Domestic Events Network. Unlike on 9/11, DEN offers real-time communication between FAA headquarters in Washington and NORTHCOM in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Instead of the 14 military jets available on 9/11, there are now nearly three times that number of Air Force and National Guard fighters ready to respond to any kind of threat. There have been more than 2,200 incidents to date.

"We are much more capable today than we were on the eleventh of September," says Adm. Timothy Keating, who is in charge of both NORAD and NORTHCOM.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has flown more than 44,000 missions to safeguard the skies over U.S. cities. Radar systems now monitor virtually every aircraft in the sky, searching for enemies from the inside out.

Admiral Keating says if NORTHCOM had 10 minutes' notice that a plane had been hijacked, he would "easily" be able to respond.

"We've done a great deal to fix and repair what went wrong five years ago. The real question is, 'are we keeping up with the evolving threat?'" says Col. PJ Crowley, a former member of President Clinton's National Security Council.

That threat centers on smaller planes, like the Cessna that mistakenly violated air space over Washington last year.

"The nightmare scenario for general aviation: small airplane packed with explosives, or a small airplane carrying a biological agent flies over a major city. The warning time is not going to be there," Crowley says.

[hlee11281]

At least now they (NORAD) haven't been told to 'stand down' and hopefully we have more than 5 aircraft (F-14s, F-16s) covering the entire USA.

We have had the capability, for years, now, of taking over an airliner and flying it from the ground. This is very likely how airliners were flown as if they were fighter planes on 9-11. I notice that nobody was fired for incompetence over 9-11. Maybe it's because they did exactly what they were told to do.

[flyer40r]

This article once again propagates a myth about general aviation (GA). These airplanes are typically smaller than a Volkswagen bug. Col. Crowley's "nightmare scenario" is laughable considering these planes can barely carry a few hundred pounds on average, and are very slow.

Mr. Keteyian might consider checking the other side of the GA story. One fact that was seriously overlooked in this article is how literally all GA pilots are actively involved with the Airport Watch program. Ask literally any GA pilot if they know of the program and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who is unaware or not interested in helping. Here is a link to information provided by the TSA to GA pilots, for example:
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2006/060901tsa-notice.pdf

I would also urge you to review this site:

http://www.gaservingamerica.org/

I've struggled all my life to realize my dream of being a private pilot. It is very discouraging to see GA being demonized in the media based on myth and exaggeration. Small airplanes have never been used in a terrorist act, and are simply not any more suitable for that than a land vehicle with similar capacity would be.

I care very deeply about security as do all pilots, and we are a close knit community. There is a measure of safety in this that was dismissed by Col. Crowley's remark.

Mike Hamel
Private pilot