9/11 during the Cold War?

Archibald

Banned
Well, for a start they might be more interceptors based around New York - F-101s, F-102s, F-104s, F-106s. The SAGE system should be able to track the wandering airliner and scramble interceptors to wipe it out of the sky.
 
Well, for a start they might be more interceptors based around New York - F-101s, F-102s, F-104s, F-106s. The SAGE system should be able to track the wandering airliner and scramble interceptors to wipe it out of the sky.

Too much $$$ and too much wastage and wear and tear on airframes. Besides, the history of terrorism is that they generally switch to softer (1) targets when they must (2).

1) Which is why in the era of mass air transit hijackings:rolleyes: you saw destinations of hijackers go from Cuba to Beirut (3).

2) Consider that it has been many years that any El Al airliner has been hijacked. For that matter, even successful suicide attacks on El Al airport service desks.

3) With the use of very friendly weigh stations in Athens and Cyprus. For much of the 1970s and 80s, neither government seemed to give much of a fig for preventing hijackings, mainly due to political problems between airline unions (very radicalized) and their governments.:( Not the case anymore, but even my old boss, a Greek-American (yet oddly very Anti-American herself), freely admitted that the old Athens airport (now replaced) was a helter-skelter bedlam of disorganization.:(
 

Delta Force

Banned
Well, for a start they might be more interceptors based around New York - F-101s, F-102s, F-104s, F-106s. The SAGE system should be able to track the wandering airliner and scramble interceptors to wipe it out of the sky.

9/11 was actually responded to using Cold War protocols. The air defense system was always designed to look at threats coming into the country, and had multiple coverage gaps inside the United States and in areas that were deemed to be less likely entry pathways. Supplemental radar sites built for Air Defense Command started being turned over to the Federal Aviation Administration for civilian use as early as the 1960s.

The plan that cleared American airspace was Cold War in origin too and at the time of its activation hadn't been updated in over a decade. It was originally developed to simplify air operations in the 1960s, as SAC and ADC could conduct operations without having to worry about engaging friendly civilian aircraft or crashing into them.
 

Delta Force

Banned
I suppose the question then would be if the very protocols that were used to defend the United States on 9/11 could create the risk of a nuclear war due to Soviet misinterpretation. Any attacks against strategic assets would escalate things on the American side, but the Soviets might be even more concerned.

From the Soviet perspective, all they would see is the Emergency Broadcast System going off, interceptors swarming from ADC bases, the command and control aircraft going up, and possibly SAC going airborne as well. All United States military bases would go to DEFCON 3, and be ordered to standby for DEFCON 2. If the October 1973 War is any indication of Cold War thinking, SAC might actually go straight to DEFCON 2.

All of that would be coming out of the blue. 9/11 itself is considered a black swan event, but all of those signals going off in a Cold War environment would be an even larger black swan. This would likely be Able Archer 83 scale, if not worse, as it would involve a surprise and sustained increase to the alert level with observable actions in the United States itself. It isn't just a cabinet level exercise.
 
Too much $$$ and too much wastage and wear and tear on airframes.
With a Cold War USA force stance, interceptors will be launched under the circumstances of a 11 September-style attack. There were a decent amount around, even in the 1980s.
I suppose the question then would be if the very protocols that were used to defend the United States on 9/11 could create the risk of a nuclear war due to Soviet misinterpretation. Any attacks against strategic assets would escalate things on the American side, but the Soviets might be even more concerned.
The Soviets were quite savvy about these sorts of things - there was a string of coincidences culminating in the attempted assassination of Reagan in 1981 that looked to the US very much like a transition to war, and the USSR knew it. They stopped their major exercise immediately - and I mean immediately, aircraft aborted their takeoff runs - once they noticed the pattern.

As long as the Moscow-Washington hotline exists, the US government is going to begin proceedings by asking 'what the hell is going on' over it. Sure, force protection protocols will kick in, but the situation with the USSR will rapidly de-escalate. There'll be a staged drawdown of nuclear striking forces, just in case the other guy is bluffing, and there's a definite risk of nuclear war.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if keys do get turned once the responsible parties are identified. It wouldn't be very helpful, but it's very possible. If that happens, though, it will be done with the US and USSR fully aware of what one another are doing.
 
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