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They weren't on alert anymore

Posted by Dave_K on September 13, 2021 at 06:32:27:
The GHWB administration, with Cheney as SECDEF, initiated the biggest reduction in military spending since the end of WWII. They created the base realignment and closure process, ended the practice of having nuclear forces on alert all the time, cancelled major weapons programs, and scaled back homeland defenses. The Clinton administration dragged its feet with the base closures, but otherwise continued to reduce defense. At the time of 9/11, the defense budget was 3.1% of GDP, the lowest it's been since before WWII.

Part of the savings came from not having Air National Guard forces on alert 24/7. During the Cold War, you would have had two fully armed and fueled F-15Cs sitting on the apron at Otis ANG base on Cape Cod, APUs going, with their crews in the alert building ready to sprint out to their aircraft at any moment. They used to scramble regularly to intercept Russian bombers, but those bombers stopped coming (for a while) at the end of the Cold war. And we stopped keeping fighters on alert ready to intercept them.

It's kind of a moot point though. The air picture over the CONUS on your average weekday morning is super busy, and coastal air defenses are looking out, not in. The hijackers had turned off their IFF transponders and kind of disappeared into the background noise before we realized what was going on. Even if there had been F-15s flying combat air patrols, they wouldn't have know what was happening until it was too late.