wrote:
I previously posted this as a reply on the original thread, but that thread
is getting so old I thought a bunch of interested folks might miss it, so I
thought I'd repost it as a new thread. I've taken the time to correct and
clarify some of the things I wrote in the original version.

Jay and perhaps some others seem to think that we should have launched every
available alert aircraft during the 9-11 attacks. I don't want to argue for
or against their points, but for consideration I do want to point out how
things were in West Germany during the time I was there from 1983-86. I've
already posted how few fighters NATO had on alert during the time, but what
some of you guys might not know is that the Warsaw Pact frequently sent
fighters across the border into West German airspace to test our reactions
two or three times a month or even more often at times. During each
incursion, only two NATO ZULU alert fighters were launched, sometimes from
Ramstein, sometimes from Bitburg, sometimes from one of the other bases with
ZULU Alert commitments. Fighters have only an hour or two's endurance
without air refueling, and it would be stupid to launch all of your jets at
once.

Your post covered a lot of ground, but your point above is very
important and not understood by Jay and others lacking knowledge of
military tactics and capability. It is very important to not be tricked
into showing what your true capabilities are and letting your enemies
think you have much less capability than you have is a very smart
tactic. The one exception was during the cold war when the MAD strategy
required showing a fair bit of your capability to your enemy.

Launching more aircraft than required for the threat at hand serves no
purpose other than to convey a lot of information about your capability.
I still believe based on what I know from both public and private
sources, the the main lag on 9/11 was a complete lack of any expectation
about an attack of this sort and the fact that the military really
wasn't prepared for it from a decision-making perspective more so than a
fundamental capability basis.

One can argue as to whether they should have been expecting a threat of
this nature and whether intel should have been shared better between the
many government (military and non-military) intelligence agencies, but
that has nothing to do with the number of fighters we have and whether
we need new or old technology fighters.

Matt