9-11 Response, was F-15 grounding

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.
Imagine how vulnerable to attack we'd have been had all of our alert jets
been airborne at the same time, then they all had to land and had been off
alert status while they were refueled. I never heard if the Warsaw Pact made
incursions at more than one point at a time, I'm supposing if they had then
NATO would have launched sufficient ZULU jets to make intercepts at each
point, but certainly not all of the ZULU jets at once. It could be that
NORAD only launched a minimum of alert aircraft on 9-11 for the same reason.
If you look at a map that shows where Ramstein, Bitburg, Soesterburg, and
RAF Wildenrath (not Bruggen, Bruggen was the Jaguar base, Wildenrath had
the Phantoms. I was mistaken in my previous post.) were in relation to the
West-East German border, you'll see that our bases were on the far side of
West Germany away from the border. It took some minutes for our jets to get
airborne and cross West German territory to make the intercept. As our jets
got close, the Pact fighters would turn around and head back for their side.

Here's a story about one such intercept. I should mention that we launched
our alert jets at least once a day, usually for what we called TANGOs,
which were training sorties, not actual intercepts. As the Phantoms rolled
out onto the runway, they were told it was a TANGO, so when they took off
on Runway 09, they immediately made a left turn and came out of burner so
as not to overfly the city of Kaiserslautern and **** off the locals.
Actual intercepts were called ALPHA launches, and us groundcrew could
always know when it was an ALPHA because the jets stayed in burner and flew
right over Kaiserslautern heading east, still in burner for as far as we
could see them. Not all ALPHAs were for border incursions. Many were to
intercept civilian aircraft that were lost and heading for the East German
border, and for ADIZ violations. So, on this particular day, I had to be
at ZULU to meet our F-4Es as they landed because while they were coming
back to Ramstein after an ALPHA launch, one Phantom pilot had called in to
report a problem with their IFF interrogator. I needed to fix the jet as
quickly as possible after it had landed so they could put it back up on
alert status. As the crew were getting out of their jets they were
excitedly talking back and forth about what they'd seen. From what they
said, they'd been in IMC, and as they approached the Munich area, they had
a radar target which accelerated away from them, heading back over the
border at Mach 2.8 and accelerating. While they never got a visual ID, they
were certain it was a MiG-25.

One more story: I mentioned the pair of Luftwaffe ZULU F-4Fs that diverted
into Ramstein one day in late 1985. I should explain that the Luftwaffe
ZULU Phantoms were restricted by post-WW2 status of forces agreements to
TANGO launches. They were not allowed to do ALPHAs, unless an actual war
with the Warsaw Pact had started. So this one day, our ZULU jets launched
on a TANGO. It was a typical rainy German day, but not too bad as I could
clearly see the jets come out of burner and make their left turns. Later Job
Control announced over our maintenance radio net that the jets wouldn't be
coming back, they'd diverted for the weather and we needed to upload a
couple more F-4Es and get them over to ZULU ASAP. It was about that time
that the Luftwaffe Phantoms landed and were parked in our Restricted Area.
They were gone when I came back to work the next morning. I'd always
wondered what was going on, why our jets had to weather divert when it
wasn't that bad out, and the Luftwaffe jets had landed okay. I don't know
when our airplanes finally returned.

Fast forward to about 7 or 8 years ago. I was at the Manitowoc, Wisconsin
airshow, and there were a couple of A-10s from the Battle Creek ANG unit on
display. The pilots were standing by the jets talking to people, and one of
them, a Lieutenant Colonel, looked very familiar to me. Turned out he had
been a Phantom Phlyer in the 526 TFS at Ramstein while I was there, and we
started talking about the good old days. For whatever reason, I mentioned
that day when our jets diverted and the Luftwaffe jets landed instead, and
he told me the rest of the story. Someone high up at NATO had decided to do
something about all of the incursions by Warsaw Pact aircraft, so they came
up with a plan. They launched out our ZULU F-4Es on a TANGO, and at the same
time TANGOed the Luftwaffe ZULU F-4Fs from JG 74 at Neuberg, which is a bit
north of Munich and much closer to the East-West German border. All four
Phantoms joined up and swapped callsigns, and landed at each other's
airfields. The 526 TFS jets were immediately refueled and put on alert
status at Neuberg in the Luftwaffe ZULU barn. Sure enough, a few days later
a Pact MiG-23 flew across the border into West German airspace. But instead
of Ramstein or Bitburg launching their alert aircraft from all the way
across Germany, the pair of 526 TFS F-4Es came up from Neuberg, between the
MiG and the border. The LtCol told me the plan was to shoot down the MiG on
our side of the border, but only if they could be sure that the wreckage
would fall away from any towns. The F-4Es were under Ground Controlled
Intercept control, but there was some glitch and they were not given
permission to fire. So one parked himself at the MiG's six-o'clock while the
other pulled up alongside the MiG and they escorted the MiG back to the
border. He told me there were no further Warsaw Pact incursions after that.

One other thing I'd like to point out for Jim, who seems to have a problem
with the ANG holding the alert commitment in CONUS. He seemed to think this
was a bad idea because, he thinks, the ANG doesn't have enough full-timers
to generate a large number of aircraft if there were an attack. Chew on this
info... During my time at Ramstein from 1983 to 86, during the Cold War,
Reagan's saber rattling, the attack on Libya, NATO's equipping with Pershing
2s and GLCMS and all the tension that caused with the Soviets, we worked
three shifts Monday through Friday. The F-15 units were cut down to two
shifts, days and evenings since they didn't have as much maintenance
required on their aircraft. USAFE cut us down to two shifts in late 1985
too, I was on second shift and worked a number of 16 hour shifts trying to
get the next day's jets all fixed, since there was no midnight shift to take
over. When we got the jets done, we went home and from that moment there was
no one on duty in our unit for those hours until the day shift showed up at
6 AM.

During the weekends and holidays, we had a skeleton crew of one maintenance
specialist from each specialty, plus four crew chiefs if memory serves. We
worked 12 hour shifts during weekend duty, from 5 AM to 5 PM. From 5 PM to 5
AM we had no maintenance people on duty in our Aircraft Maintenance Unit.
Our main duty on Weekend Duty was to launch out and recover the few F-4Es we
had going on cross-countries. We also finished up whatever work there was on
the next Monday's jets that were on the flying schedule. I don't know how
many pilots had weekend duty as Operations worked out of a different
building, but I'm guessing very few if any were there after 5PM. Without us
being there, it wouldn't have mattered even if there were pilots on duty. As
a reminder, an F-4E can't launch out without ground crew, since Phantoms use
external start carts (AM32A-60) to start the engines. Not that it would've
mattered anyway, since none of the jets were armed with anything but the
nose gun. Had there been a "bolt out of the blue" attack, ZULU would have
been on their own until sufficient maintenance and weapons people could be
called in to start loading out the jets and we had aircrews on hand to fly
them. No ****.

I'm quite sure the Soviets were well aware of that too. We communicated
with each other and Job Control with Motorola hand-held radios which
weren't encrypted. Any Soviet spy could've been stationed off base,
monitoring our radio traffic and known everything that was going on. USAFE
was well-aware of the spy potential, we were given an "OPSEC" training
course as part of our unit in-processing that discussed the fact the
Soviets were most likely listening in on our communications and that we
should be careful not to discuss anything classified.
Zulu at Ramstein was manned 24-7 by two pilots, two WSOs, and four crew
chiefs. The aircrew members and ZULU qualified crew chiefs rotated the
duty, which is exactly how the ANG does it. When the 86 TFW at Ramstein
began converting to F-16Cs and Ds, six ANG F-4D Phantoms, their ground
crews and aircrews were brought over to Ramstein to take over the ZULU
commitment. There were two jets from Minnesota, two from North Dakota, and
two from California. At any given time, they had two up on alert status and
the other four flew local training sorties.
Anyway, the point I was going to make is the ANG has full-timers manning
their alert aircraft, plus full-timers conducting day-to-day operations.
During nights and holidays they have probably as many people on duty as we
did at Ramstein. If there would be indications of hostilities, they'd do
exactly what we'd have done at Ramstein: recall all off-duty personnel,
and get ready to fight the war. The ANG has always done extremely well,
and often won, in USAF competitions such as Gunsmoke (gunnery and bombing)
and William Tell (air to air), and ANG and Reservist trash haulers have
freqently won or placed very highly in Airlift Rodeo competitions. Having
been both Air Guard and Active Duty USAF, I personally have no problems
with the idea that the ANG and AFRES have taken over a good portion of air
defense, transport and tanker missions from the USAF. I don't belive Jim's
criticism is warranted.
Scott Wilson

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

On 1-Jan-2008, Matt Whiting wrote:

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.

I agree with you Matt, except for one point. I am completely sure that the
Soviets knew exactly how many jets were up on alert status at each of the
NATO bases, and could probably even give you the tail numbers of the jets on
alert on any given day. Our OPSEC (Operations Security) left a lot to be
desired. Any time a ZULU jet had a problem, Job Control radioed the fact
along with the tail number of the afflicted jet to us in our AMU so we could
dispatch someone over to fix it. And when the jet was repaired, the fact was
radioed to Job Control as well. When a scheduled tradeout of tail numbers
was to be done, that info was also talked about openly on our radio net. The
only thing I can figure is that USAFE and NATO were quite convinced the
Warsaw Pact would never actually attack us, contrary to the public posturing
put forth about the "imminent Soviet Threat." I wonder if the whole
propaganda effort was just in order to keep their funding up, and continues
to this day supported by the paranoids in our government. I do know I came
away from that experience and several other experiences during my 10 years
Active Duty thinking that what we refer to as "Hawks" in our government
really don't know what they are talking about. To me they are just paranoid
beyond all reason. Remember the "Domino Theory" and how it was so important
to stop the Communists in Vietnam to prevent the global spread of Communism?
Well, the Communists won in Vietnam, and the dominos didn't fall. And all
the bluster about Saddam and Iraq from the Bush Administration leading up to
the invasion was simply ridiculous, and it's a shame that so many of our
people were paranoid enough to have bought into it. I believe it's our duty
to be skeptical of our government's claims of threats, they've proven
themselves not trustworthy in my view.
Scott Wilson

wrote:
On 1-Jan-2008, Matt Whiting wrote:

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.

I agree with you Matt, except for one point. I am completely sure that the
Soviets knew exactly how many jets were up on alert status at each of the
NATO bases, and could probably even give you the tail numbers of the jets on
alert on any given day. Our OPSEC (Operations Security) left a lot to be
desired. Any time a ZULU jet had a problem, Job Control radioed the fact
along with the tail number of the afflicted jet to us in our AMU so we could
dispatch someone over to fix it. And when the jet was repaired, the fact was
radioed to Job Control as well. When a scheduled tradeout of tail numbers
was to be done, that info was also talked about openly on our radio net. The
only thing I can figure is that USAFE and NATO were quite convinced the
Warsaw Pact would never actually attack us, contrary to the public posturing
put forth about the "imminent Soviet Threat." I wonder if the whole
propaganda effort was just in order to keep their funding up, and continues
to this day supported by the paranoids in our government. I do know I came
away from that experience and several other experiences during my 10 years
Active Duty thinking that what we refer to as "Hawks" in our government
really don't know what they are talking about. To me they are just paranoid
beyond all reason. Remember the "Domino Theory" and how it was so important
to stop the Communists in Vietnam to prevent the global spread of Communism?
Well, the Communists won in Vietnam, and the dominos didn't fall. And all
the bluster about Saddam and Iraq from the Bush Administration leading up to
the invasion was simply ridiculous, and it's a shame that so many of our
people were paranoid enough to have bought into it. I believe it's our duty
to be skeptical of our government's claims of threats, they've proven
themselves not trustworthy in my view.
Scott Wilson

Yes, certainly poor operational practice and meddling politics can muck
up the best of systems.

Matt

On Jan 1, 2:58*pm, Matt Whiting wrote:
wrote:
On *1-Jan-2008, Matt Whiting wrote:

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.

I agree with you Matt, except for one point. I am completely sure that the
Soviets knew exactly how many jets were up on alert status at each of the
NATO bases, and could probably even give you the tail numbers of the jets on
alert on any given day. Our OPSEC (Operations Security) left a lot to be
desired. Any time a ZULU jet had a problem, Job Control radioed the fact
along with the tail number of the afflicted jet to us in our AMU so we could
dispatch someone over to fix it. And when the jet was repaired, the fact was
radioed to Job Control as well. When a scheduled tradeout of tail numbers
was to be done, that info was also talked about openly on our radio net. The
only thing I can figure is that USAFE and NATO were quite convinced the
Warsaw Pact would never actually attack us, contrary to the public posturing
put forth about the "imminent Soviet Threat." * I wonder if the whole
propaganda effort was just in order to keep their funding up, and continues
to this day supported by the paranoids in our government. I do know I came
away from that experience and several other experiences during my 10 years
Active Duty thinking that what we refer to as "Hawks" in our government
really don't know what they are talking about. To me they are just paranoid
beyond all reason. *Remember the "Domino Theory" and how it was so important
to stop the Communists in Vietnam to prevent the global spread of Communism?
*Well, the Communists won in Vietnam, and the dominos didn't fall. And all
the bluster about Saddam and Iraq from the Bush Administration leading up to
the invasion was simply ridiculous, and it's a shame that so many of our
people were paranoid enough to have bought into it. I believe it's our duty
to be skeptical of our government's claims of threats, they've proven
themselves not trustworthy in my view.
Scott Wilson

Yes, certainly poor operational practice and meddling politics can muck
up the best of systems.

Matt- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

1.NORAD was staging exercises on 9/11. When informed of the Boston
hijackings a USAF officer replied on the radio "Cool".

2. Egypt Air 990 was piloted by an unauthorized
person...bucket..Nantucket.. in 1999. 9/11 wasn't the first case of
"unauthorized" pilots.

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.

Big snip of fascinating post

Thanks, Scott, for the great post. Very interesting -- and scary --
stuff.

Two quick points, and a question:

1. I didn't say we should have launched everything we had on 9/11. I
said we DID launch everything we had in the D.C.-to-New York area,
according to published reports. That's the scary part, cuz it
amounted to a tiny handfull of fighters to defend our most important
assets.

2. I'm not sure that highlighting the incompetence of our Cold War-era
Air Force is a good way to prove that handing over our home defense to
the Air Guard has been a good idea. The fact that at the height of the
Cold War our air and support crews predictably took weekends and
holidays off -- and broadcast this status over walkie-talkies -- does
NOT inspire confidence. It just doesn't get much dumber than that,
tactically.

3. Did word of the Soviet incursions into German air space ever leak
out at the time? I don't remember reading anything about this, back
then -- and you'd think it would have been big news.

Thanks,
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck 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.

Big snip of fascinating post

Thanks, Scott, for the great post. Very interesting -- and scary --
stuff.

Two quick points, and a question:

1. I didn't say we should have launched everything we had on 9/11. I
said we DID launch everything we had in the D.C.-to-New York area,
according to published reports. That's the scary part, cuz it
amounted to a tiny handfull of fighters to defend our most important
assets.

Published reports of anything are generally inaccurate.

2. I'm not sure that highlighting the incompetence of our Cold War-era
Air Force is a good way to prove that handing over our home defense to
the Air Guard has been a good idea. The fact that at the height of the
Cold War our air and support crews predictably took weekends and
holidays off -- and broadcast this status over walkie-talkies -- does
NOT inspire confidence. It just doesn't get much dumber than that,
tactically.

The military usually takes holidays off unless someone is shooting
at them, and even then sometimes.

Everybodies military; if they don't the other side will get really
suspicious.

3. Did word of the Soviet incursions into German air space ever leak
out at the time? I don't remember reading anything about this, back
then -- and you'd think it would have been big news.

Sigh, there were Soviet incursions into just about every part of
European airspace, Asian airspace, and American airspace.

They would turn around as soon as someone came out to greet them.

It was all a game and both sides played.

There were occasional pictures of Bear crews waving to the US fighters
published in the military oriented aviation mags; it was no secret.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

On 1-Jan-2008, wrote:

The military usually takes holidays off unless someone is shooting
at them, and even then sometimes.

Everybodies military; if they don't the other side will get really
suspicious.


2. I'm not sure that highlighting the incompetence of our Cold War-era
Air Force is a good way to prove that handing over our home defense to
the Air Guard has been a good idea. The fact that at the height of the
Cold War our air and support crews predictably took weekends and
holidays off -- and broadcast this status over walkie-talkies -- does
NOT inspire confidence. It just doesn't get much dumber than that,
tactically.



Jim's thought about everybody's military taking normal time off to keep the
other side from getting suspicious is probably a big clue why we were so
open in our communications about ZULU and maintenance operations in general.
I really don't think our Air Force was incompetent. Where there was need to
keep things under wraps, we did a pretty good job of it. Remember how long
the F-117 had been flying before it was revealed publicly? I know of a few
other classified systems that we kept under wraps for some time until there
was no longer a need for them to be kept secret. Ever hear of Combat Tree?
It was a system we carried in our F-4s that could actively interrogate the
Soviets' IFF systems or passively listen in on Soviet IFF replies to their
own interrogations. It was a great thing for IDing and locating bogies. I
worked on that one in our jets, and I know it was kept classified for a lot
of years. We even had plastic "switch guards" we put on the control heads to
keep our WSOs from being able to select the active interrogation mode
accidentally, so the Soviets wouldn't detect the interrogation signal coming
from our side and give away the capability we had. It was declassified just
a few years ago.
To put Jim's thought another way, if we kept the normal number of jets on
alert and didn't work too hard at concealing what was going on in
day-to-day operations, the Soviets would have no reason to think we were
planning an attack and tensions between us could be kept low. I don't know
too much about how the Soviets conducted their day-to-day operations, but
everything I'd heard said that if they began preparing to attack NATO, we'd
have ample notice. It's virtually impossible these days to prepare for an
attack without undertaking preparations the other side is bound to detect.

It was very easy to notice the disconnect between what Reagan and our
government were saying about how dangerous the Soviets were and how
relatively unconcerned our command staff seemed to be in real life. We
certainly trained for combat, but I never felt as though war was imminent
aside from when we bombed Libya. Then it got a little scary.
Chernenko/Andropov/Gorbechev and the Soviet government were also
frequently telling their people how evil we were and how they had to be
prepared for a NATO attack, and I'd guess at the operational level they
were probably about as relaxed as we were, call it relaxed vigilance on
both sides. I used to be able to pick up Radio Moscow on my AM radio in my
car and at home, and listening to their propaganda made it easy to see the
exaggerations they told their people about us and start to see how a lot
of what we were being told about them by our government was probably
equally exaggerated. The threat of a Soviet invasion of NATO (and the
threat that Saddam, Kim Il Jong, and Iran pose or posed to us) was
certainly there but greatly exaggerated for our government's own purposes.
In my humble opinion, of course.

As for the incursions the Warsaw Pact did to check our responses, we did
indeed do similar things. See :
http://www.aiipowmia.com/koreacw/cw1.html
for a list of our aircraft that the Soviets shotdown while on recon
missions. There were other things we did that didn't involve overflying
their territory. A friend of mine who flew RF-4Cs out of the 26 TRW at
Zweibrucken once told me about one of his favorite missions, which he called
"a Banzai run". The 26th had several airplanes modified with an electronic
recon system called TEREC, which could detect and through triangulation
fairly precisely locate radar emitters. The Soviets were usually pretty good
about keeping most of their air defense radars turned off, so we wouldn't
know where they were. Of course in planning for a war you'd want to know
where ALL of their air defense radars are located. So on TEREC missions,
they had the TEREC RF-4C flying at low altitude near the border to escape
detection by the Soviets. In the meantime, another RF-4C flying over the
middle part of West Germany would suddenly turn toward the border and
accelerate as though they were going to blast across the border, turning
back away from the border at the last second. Of course the Soviet defenses
would immediately be put on alert, not knowing what this crazy American
fighter was going to do, and all their radars would light up. In the
meantime, the TEREC jet would pop up and cruise aong the border, recording
and locating all of the emitters.

For the question of the ANG operating the Air Defense units in the CONUS, I
found a fascinating history of that on the Air National Guard's website. I
was especially interested to see what Colin Powell as the Chairman of Joint
Chief of Staff thought about alert aircraft in CONUS. Here is the pertinent
section, from

http://www.ang.af.mil/history/Herita...erTheStorm.asp

Maintaining the air defense and air sovereignty of the CONUS were federal
missions accomplished by 1st Air Force, a numbered air force (NAF) assigned
to the ACC. In 1994, the Air Guard had begun taking over 1st Air Force which
provided the command and control mechanisms for providing the air defense
and air sovereignty of the continental United States. The original
conversations proposing that transition had taken place between Maj. Gen.
Killey, then ANG Director, and Gen. Robert D. Russ, then Tactical Air
Command Commander, during 1990-1991. General Russ, a strong supporter of the
Air Guard, had originated the dialogue. He had noted that all the fighter
interceptor squadrons defending the CONUS by that time were ANG units.
Defense of the homeland had seemed a natural fit for the Guard. The Air
Force had wanted to transfer responsibility for resourcing that mission to
the ANG primarily for two reasons. First, it had needed to reduce its own
end strength because of post Cold War downsizing. Second, it had thought
that the ANG was in a better position to politically defend that mission
which had been coming under increasing attack as expensive and unnecessary.
For their part, Air Guard senior leaders wanted to maintain as much of its
fighter interceptor force structure as possible. Moreover, they needed to
find new missions for much of its combat communications and tactical air
control units which faced dramatic drawdowns in the early 1990s. The BRAC
report of March 1993 gave the transfer proposal additional impetus. It
directed the Air Force to either move the Northeast Air Defense Sector
(NEADS) from Griffiss AFB, New York or give it to the ANG. Since ACC did not
want to move it and was unable to consolidate it with another sector,
transfer to the ANG appeared to be a logical choice. Following discussions
between General Killey and senior Air Force leadership, agreement was
reached to transfer the entire responsibility for 1st Air Force to the ANG.
In September 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin approved the transfer.
On 28 January 1994, General Killey, who had just stepped down as Air Guard
Director, assumed command of 1st Air Force as directed by General Merrill A.
McPeak Air Force Chief of Staff. With that action, the main impetus for
completing the transition to Air Guard control shifted to Tyndall AFB,
Florida from the NGB, the Air Staff, NORAD, and Headquarters, ACC. However,
the transfer was also intended to place the Chief of the NGB and the ANG
Director in partnership with the Commander, 1st Air Force to assist the
transition. Throughout the conversion process, all affected units had to
maintain combat ready status.
On 1 December 1994, Headquarters NEADS was redesignated Headquarters
Northeast Air Defense Sector (ANG). During FY 1995, Air Force leadership
directed the acceleration of the transfer process and won approval from the
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs to hire an
additional 182 AGR personnel to help accomplish that. In October 1995, the
Southeast Air Defense Squadron and the Western Air Defense Squadron were
constituted and allotted to the NGB.
Command relationships for 1st Air Force were relatively complicated by
traditional Air Guard standards. The NAF came under ACC. As the force
provider to NORAD, ACC was responsible for providing organized, trained, and
equipped units that maintained the air defense and air sovereignty for the
Continental United States NORAD Region (CONAR). The NGB was responsible for
ensuring that 1st Air Force was properly resourced, particularly its
operations and maintenance as well as its military personnel budgets. ACC
remained responsible for major systems acquisition including modernization
of the NAF's sector and regional operations centers. NORAD continued as the
war-fighting command that 1st Air Force was responsible to in the execution
of its operational missions.
All of this was further complicated by the fact that most 1st Air Force
personnel were Guardsmen who remained in state status (Title 32, U.S. Code)
while organizing, training, and equipping for their federal missions. They
automatically converted to federal status (Title 10, U.S. Code) when
actually conducting federal missions such as doing intercepts of
unidentified aircraft entering U.S. air space because air defense and air
sovereignty remained federal, not National Guard, missions. Likewise,
certain officers including the ROC/SOC commanders always remained in Title
10 status to insure an unbroken federal chain of command.
The size and composition of 1st Air Force's flying unit force structure
continued to be a major issue during the transition. Over recent decades,
the air defense interceptor force defending North America had been
dramatically reduced from a high of 2,600 dedicated aircraft (including the
Royal Canadian Air Force) in 1958. It had shrunk to 20 ANG fighters at 10
alert locations for CONAR by February 1996. However, 1st Air Force continued
to face strong budgetary pressures to either eliminate or dramatically
reduce dedicated ANG fighter interceptor units for the air defense and air
sovereignty.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense rejected efforts to include language
in the FY 1996 and FY 1997 Defense Program Guidance to include air
sovereignty and air defense as a stated mission and to program resources for
them. In 1996, the General Accounting Office (GAO) criticized the Air Guard
for continuing to maintain 150 fighters in 10 dedicated air defense units to
defend the United States against invading enemy bombers at a cost of nearly
$500 million annually nearly a half-decade after the Soviet Union's demise.
The GAO urged that the 10 ANG units be either disbanded or given other
missions. That criticism was well established in Washington, D.C. Gen. Colin
Powell, while JCS Chairman, had advocated an end to dedicated continental
air defense force in 1993 as had the GAO a year later. Both had suggested
that general-purpose fighter forces of the Air Force, Navy and Marines --
active duty and reserve components -- could accomplish the mission.
By the end of FY 1997, the ANG had assumed total responsibility for all of
1st Air Force including its three Regional Operational Control Centers and
its Sector Operations Control Center as well as its NAF headquarters. The
transition to the Air Guard was officially complete. Air Guardsmen had
accomplished that unprecedented transition while retaining high readiness
levels throughout the process. It represented a major change in the Air
Guard's historic role, executing the command and control function for a
full-time Air Force mission. But, 1st Air Force faced a difficult balancing
act and an uncertain future. Continuing pressures to balance the federal
budget and the absence of an international peer competitor suggested that
the very survival of 1st Air Force, especially its dedicated
fighter-interceptor force, would remain an issue. General Killey turned over
responsibility for dealing with such questions when he relinquished command
of 1st Air Force to Brig Gen Larry K. Arnold upon his retirement from active
duty at Tyndall AFB, Florida effective 18 December 1997.

3. Did word of the Soviet incursions into German air space ever leak
out at the time? *I don't remember reading anything about this, back
then -- and you'd think it would have been big news.

Sigh, there were Soviet incursions into just about every part of
European airspace, Asian airspace, and American airspace.

They would turn around as soon as someone came out to greet them.

It was all a game and both sides played.

There were occasional pictures of Bear crews waving to the US fighters
published in the military oriented aviation mags; it was no secret.

Sure, those intercepts were all over the periodicals at the time --
but they were usually up near Alaska, or off the coast near Cuba.
Never, to my recollection, did we hear about any along the highly
sensitive, highly defended East/West German border -- as the OP
discusses.

That would have been awfully big news, methinks.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
3. Did word of the Soviet incursions into German air space ever leak
out at the time? ?I don't remember reading anything about this, back
then -- and you'd think it would have been big news.

Sigh, there were Soviet incursions into just about every part of
European airspace, Asian airspace, and American airspace.

They would turn around as soon as someone came out to greet them.

It was all a game and both sides played.

There were occasional pictures of Bear crews waving to the US fighters
published in the military oriented aviation mags; it was no secret.

Sure, those intercepts were all over the periodicals at the time --
but they were usually up near Alaska, or off the coast near Cuba.
Never, to my recollection, did we hear about any along the highly
sensitive, highly defended East/West German border -- as the OP
discusses.

What makes you think there is anything special about Germany?

Soviet Bloc aircraft routinely played the game with most of Western
Europe as well as Asia.

I tracked North Korean Migs playing the game on a regular basis while
in Korea.

Conversations with others who had been stationed in other places left
no doubt that it was the status quo around the world.

Soviet Bloc aircraft have been known to shadow airliners inbound to the
east coast out of the Atlantic to see how far they could get.

That would have been awfully big news, methinks.

All this was hardly a secret but neither was it big news.

You probably never heard about the time I directed the ROK Navy to
a North Korean patrol boat in South Korean waters, which the ROK
Navy promptly sunk either. Not a secret but who in the world would
care about the incident?

--
Jim Pennino

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