Military regularly rehearses shooting down hijacked airliners

STANLEY NOTE: So what happened on 9/11????

Military regularly rehearses shooting down hijacked airliners
Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 12:42 PM EDT (1642 GMT)

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military practices at least twice each week for the
nightmare scenario of having to shoot down a civilian airliner hijacked by
terrorists, the commander of forces in North America said Thursday.
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Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, head of U.S. Northern Command, said a strong set of
safeguards are in place to prevent an accidental or unwarranted shootdown of a
commercial airplane. Commanders, pilots and air defense crews are drilled on
those procedures as many as four times each week, Eberhart said.

The rules allow for an order to shoot down a civilian plane only if there is no
other option to prevent a September 11-style attack on the ground, the general
said. There are authentication procedures for such orders to make sure "someone
can't just get on the radio and say, 'This is the president, I order you to
shoot down that plane,"' Eberhart said.

Military jets were in the air during the 2001 attacks but were too far away to
shoot down the planes before they struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Airline passengers can be confident that their planes will not be accidentally
shot down, Eberhart said.
"I would take issue with anyone who would say the men and women in our armed
forces are trigger happy," Eberhart said at a breakfast meeting with reporters.
"I'm more worried that they would be trigger hesitant than trigger happy. We
have long discussions with people to see if they're ready to do this."

Eberhart said he has never heard of a case where a pilot or missile battery
operator was hesitant to shoot down a hijacked airliner. Those involved have
repeated psychological screening and testing on the procedures to make sure they
will follow those rules, Eberhart said.

The Pentagon created Northern Command in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks
to coordinate military defense of the United States and response to attacks or
natural disasters.

Eberhart, a four-star general from the Air Force, said the al Qaeda terrorist
network responsible for the attacks two years ago has been seriously damaged.
"Most of the varsity players are gone. In most cases we're dealing with the
junior varsity team or the freshman team," Eberhart said.
"But we can't rest on our laurels. We've got to keep the throttle up ... If
anything, I think we've bought ourselves some time."

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