Hijackers made jetliners ‘invisible’

[Snazzy]

Hijackers made jetliners ‘invisible’

BY THOMAS FRANK
WASHINGTON BUREAU (NEWSDAY)

June 22, 2004

WASHINGTON -- For 36 minutes on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Flight 77 raced from Ohio toward Washington, and not a single air-traffic controller knew where it was.

The plane's lengthy stealth, documented Thursday by the Sept. 11 commission, occurred partly because the hijackers turned off, with ease, the device that signals a plane's identity and location to ground controllers.

When controllers finally detected Flight 77 on radar after losing it above Cleveland, the plane was just six minutes from hitting the Pentagon and killing 184 people. Fighter jets buzzing in the air 153 miles to the east had no chance of an intercept.

Weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, aviation officials vowed to require airlines to improve the signaling devices, called transponders, so hijacked planes could be tracked. A pilot would be able to flick a switch to send a hijacking alert through the transponder, which could not be turned off.

Yet the airline industry objected to the Federal Aviation Administration's proposal in January 2003 as costly and unnecessary. Nothing has been done.

....

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ustran0622,0,6693016.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

[Don_G]

1. It's Either Improve Transponders

Or build a new nationwide system of civilian RADAR that can effectively see the planes, birds and trains like the Military systems do.

Civilian RADAR is designed to see the transponders and ignore the weak, spurious signals common around the cities.

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Oh, now I get it!

It was the hijackers fault! Nevermind that air traffic controllers had reported the hijackings minutes after take-off. </sarcasm>

[disinfo_guy]

50. David Copperfield was the 20th hijacker

evidentally

[Snazzy]

3. They say $358 million

to upgrade the transponders. Can't afford it.

We spend that before lunch in Iraq.

(This issue was discussed, I think, in the second hearing on Friday--haven't found a free transcript for that yet)

[Kelvin Mace]

4. $358 million?

Then don't give the contract to Halliburton. Give it to someone who will charge a reasonable amount.

[Ready4Change]

11. Might be understating the cost.

Current transponders use a 4 digit numeric code. That leaves you almost 10,000 combinations. Might seem like a lot, but if they are on all the time, you need one for every plane, including smaller, GA (general aviation) aircraft.

I go to one particular airshow every summer that usually has about 10,000 aircraft in attendance, mostly smaller GA aircraft.

Currently, aircraft put in codes they are given by ATC as needed. Otherwise they use a single generic code to help in their tracking. But, outside of traffic areas, the use of transponders isn't required.

Now, to upgrade this system, you not only need to replace every single transponder in existance, you also need to upgrade all the systems used to track those transponders, all the way from RADAR sets to ATC screens, including every bit of software for every auxilary function, because that transponder code is likely to be a key bit of information in all those systems. I'm not saying it can't be done. In fact, maybe it should be done, as much of that equipment is antiquated and could use some updating.

But, in total, it'll cost a lot more than 380 some million, and a lot of that will be spent by little, non-commercial GA aircraft owners.

[Occulus]

47. So we need a new ATC system.

Shocker there- many have been saying exactly that for a number of years. The question is, what hasn't it happened?

If we were to combine something like a 3D VR system- shoot, use a GAMING engine for the video, for God's sake*- and enhance it with spiffy items like an automatic "safety bubble" around planes and buildings, remote autopilot, GPS tracking, and so forth, why, we could prevent ALL future hijackings in our airspace!

I mean, LORDY! Is this such a difficult concept? Expensive, yes, but we do a lot of expensive things here, the Iraq war being only one. This is something useful that very well could save lives.

*The 3D gaming engines of yesterday, such as the ones that ran "Quake2", "Half-Life", and even "Black & White", are more than adequate for this job. It's ridiculously easy to add objects and obstacles to the maps used in these games; the only difficulty I can foresee is twofold: the maximum size of the maps themselves and the time needed to render the edited map files into the actual binary space partition (or whatever name the engine gives it; .bsp is used for Quake2). This idea, from the point of view of someone who has made some of these maps and played hundreds, is certainly worth a look.

[Ready4Change]

57. Display is trivial.

The real problem is coordinating literally thousands of pieces of different hardware, all with different focuses behind their design, and using them to track real objects moving in a really large area of 3D space, and doing so in a way that uncooperative objects still can't hide. (In fact, become more noticable because they are trying to hide.)

And beyond the technical lay the interdepartmental problems. The best info in the world does you no good if it resides in one department that isn't talking with the others. That's an organizational problem, which can be harder to solve than technical problems.

But displaying that information, once you have the trivial task you say it is.

Now, if you want to bring in remote autopilots, keep in mind that anything you create can be taken over and used against you, just as airliners themselves were in 9/11. If you use remote autopilots, then the terrorists can use them too, and not even need to sacrifice themselves in the process.

[DS1]

37. I'll snap all the switches off at the base for a mere

ONE HUNDRED MEEEELION DOLLARS!

:evilgrin:

[truthisfreedom]

67. American ingenuity went out the window when callous, cynical profiteering

bastards like the weasels in the bush administration got ahold of our country and destroyed the concept of real patriotism and replaced it with a partisan war.

during WWII we would have had a fix for those transponders within weeks of 9-11, and it may just have involved snapping off switches at the base and sealing them with jb weld epoxy to prevent tampering.

[I thought so.]

5. A few facts.

Transponders only indicate a plane's altitude and flight number. Away from airports, airplanes must follow specific flyways that can be tracked by regional radars. If a flight wanders off the path it can't be tracked. I assume this explains the loss of the flight.
Modern airliners are so well equipped as to make the regional flyways obsolete. This could save time and fuel.

I believe its called free flight. A search should give more info. Its time the military left the cold war and retooled to the threat of hijackers.

[pretzel4gore]

6. hijackers make news disappear...

not to mention fabricate bushit outta whole cloth (see: mohammed atta's passport found in wtc rubble by off duty fbi goof)..
i think this is bigger story.
wellstone's plane just 'crashed'....flight 587 tail just 'fell off'

[dbt]

7. And there is the possibility that this story could be DISINFORMATION.

That tactic has been used by the government (even before bu$h) to cover its ass a time or two. The Warren Commission Report is a prime example.

:freak:
dbt

[I thought so.]

8. So what are you saying?

What has the Warren Report have to do with this subject? Please give us a clue.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. The Warren Commission is a prime example of disinformation....

...given to the American people as the "solution" to the assassination of JFK. The commissioners were hand-picked by LBJ with the obvious intent of using well-known and well-respected public figures to quickly sweep that assassination under the rug by blaming a "lone-nut gunman" with alleged ties to the communists.

Well, they almost succeeded. Oswald had indeed lived in the USSR, and his wife was Russian. Oswald had also handed out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans and had supposedly visited the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He had also allegedly purchased the Italian-made rifle used in the assassination using a fake name that matched information found in his wallet.

What the Commission left out about Oswald was the following:

1. While serving with the US Marines, Oswald was a radar operator at the Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan. His job was to track the outgoing and incoming U-2 recon plane flights into the old USSR. The U-2 program was our most closely held secret in the late 1950s and he was given a "Crypto" security clearance.

2. Oswald had a CIA "201" personnel file indicating that he was, at one time, an employee of the CIA. Coupled with his trip to the USSR, one begins to question Oswald's alleged "defection" to that country. As evidenced by their secret police files, even the Russians were leary of him while he lived in the USSR.

3. In Oswald's address book was the name of individual by the name of George DeMohrenschildt. George and his wife had befriended Oswald and his wife when they arrived in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. George was a degreed geologist whose violently anti-communist family had fled old Russia following the revolution and subsequent civil war. He traveled all over the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. On March 29, 1977... the same day DeMohrenschildt agreed to an interview with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, George DeMohrenschildt was found dead of a shotgun blast through his mouth by his daughter, Alexandra. His death was ruled a suicide. Found in HIS address book was the name of George H. W. Bush. It was revealed in subsequent years that George DeMohrenschildt had worked as a CIA contract agent.

4. Found among Oswald's personal effects following his killing at the hands of Jack Ruby, was a Minox camera. The Minox was a miniature camera used as the camera of choice by the CIA. Jack Ruby was also an individual glossed over in the Warren Commission Report.

5. Read the following information on Abraham Zapruder, the man who filmed the most famous film of the JFK assassination:

<http://www.rense.com/politics5/zeg.htm>

The government, using the captive mainstream media, has used disinformation over the years to keep Americans from learning the truth about a wide range of topics.

Stating that the turning off the transponder made the hijacked flights "invisible" is yet another piece of disinformation. Radar was still able to track those planes...turning off the transponder and the IFF system has NOTHING to do with how radar works.

[I thought so.]

29. I really like Rense.

I jackoff to the UFO pix all the time.(not) Get a reality. It is a bullshit site.

[leesa]

34. Ahhh...denial. It's so refreshing!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

44. Look a little closer...Rense didn't write the article, did he?.....

I find it interesting that some posters resort to personal attacks when faced with information and/or subjects they know nothing about.

Yes, there are parts of Rense's site that stretch reality, but after researching the JFK case myself for forty years, I can tell you that these connections actually exist. Your government chose what to tell you then, and they're choosing what to tell you now.

[Forkboy]

58. While I believe your words regarding what you do to ufo pics

would the bullshit on the site include the DU articles he posts?

[Name removed]

76. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

80. Self-deleted. Sorry.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

46. Look up TWA #800 that was shot down in July 1996 by a missile.

The fact that former military pilots in the air saw it happen along with eyewitnesses on the ground was very effectively covered up and the story of the fuel tank blowing up pacified almost everyone.

Even Richard Clarke gave a very clumsy cover up of this incident in his book 'Against All Enemies.'

A former lieutenant colonel did his own investigation and gave a press conference on C-SPAN where he berated the press corps for buying into the bullshit cover-up without doing their science homework.

A surface-to-air missile launcher was found unmanned outside Baltimore in the late 90s, too. It stayed out of the news.

[I thought so.]

51. Gosh!

Can you steer me to the real truth.

[frylock]

52. by keeping up your act..

you are an idiot.

[TomNickell]

9. 4500 planes.....

Remember, there are thousands of planes in the air at any time. Keeping track of them without an active system would be a very hard job.

[Occulus]

48. see my post, "So we need a new..."

Please chip in; I think I have a pretty good idea percolating there. I'd like some input :)

[Corgigal]

10. nothing has been done

because this "reason" why we didn't know where the planes were is a lie. Pssssh, pass it on.

Transponders aren't the weak link..and all planes give off a primary echo targets.

Looky what I found:
http://www.dean-boys.com/extras/iff/iffqa.html

Bush needs to pull another out of the hat, me thinks.

[Pachamama]

49. Wow...interesting info Corgigal...Me thinks you are right about the "lie".

...Amazing how stupid they think the Sheeple are...and they are right...I'd love to see info like this and what is in this post be in a Kerry campaign ad - just like the BushCo. state Kerry voted against defense that weakened our countries security (although it was a total mistatement of facts - they should look at Dick Cheney's record as a congressman).

[nolabels]

83. How lame do they think the rest of the world is anyway?

http://www.civilamerica.org/pages/11/
Flight 77 Revisited
"Where are our aircraft when a missile is heading towards the Pentagon?"

3/27/04
(snip)
NORAD constantly conducts intense surveillance of North American airspace. Each and every flying thing is assessed. Remember that this system was created to defend the airspace during the Cold War, are we really expected to believe that NORAD would have to rely on the FAA once a Soviet missile (without a transponder) entered our airspace because NORAD only “looks out”26 and not in? If it is not cool, if there is no radio contact, if it is off course, if it has shut it’s transponder off, (thereby the plane being unable to satisfy the authorities with the required electronic interrogation”27) then they give themselves two minutes to properly identify the object, for if they can’t, their next step is physical interception “by a hunter of NORAD.”28 The escorts for Payne Stewart’s plane which showed up just sixteen minutes (16) after the air traffic controllers gave up trying to contact it by radio fall into this category. If Flight 77 had fighters scrambled to find it (as required) 16 minutes after the Indianapolis air traffic controllers failed to make radio contact with it, they would have arrived at 9:12 AM. Flight 77 “crashed” into the Pentagon at 9:38 AM, by the earliest accounts.

We the People deserve to know exactly what is going on.29 The first question which begs to be asked is why Flight 77 did not have contact attempted with it physically, as required, at 8:56 AM, especially after Flight 77 first changed course and then removed it’s own ability to satisfy an “electronic interrogation” by shutting off it’s transponder? The claim that after the transponder was shut off, the air traffic controllers were unable to find Flight 77 on radar initially, because they were still looking for a westbound flight simply does not carry, because it had changed direction before shutting off the transponder.

The other problem is that American Airlines Flight 77 which took off from Dulles Airport in Washington DC at 8:20 AM on 9/11 with 64 people on board,30 which also allegedly crashed into the Pentagon, killing 125 more people,31 is being referred to as a missile in the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
(snip)

[Gore1FL]

12. Gosh

All that money spent on Stealth technology, and all along we just had to turn off transponders....

They must really think everyone in this country is an idiot.-

[quagmire_iraq]

66. You know what your problem is?

Lack of faith.. Yea thats it... You need JESSSSSUS in your diet...


Actually haven't you gone to some of the other forums? I haven't tried freepers but I think those guys are locos... But I go to itshappening once in a while. I got a couple hundred negative ratings for posting some of dar jamals stories about iraq. There was that another letter from a familyinbaghdad about her nephew getting thrown off a bridge and she wrote a letter to bush about it, I posted that and got hit for it... Then some guy said Israel would kick ass and I had 5 photos of where IDF shoulders where aiming their guns at little kids, Well that basically destroyed me....

>>They must really think everyone in this country is an idiot.-<<

Well... They do... and from what I can see.. Most are... and the truth can kill you.

And they dont want to hear it.

I think its called faith based belief's.. They teach you that in dynetics classes.. I am great, I am invincible I am right, I can do anything.. Positive thinking, motivation and will. It can over come anything even reality.

[jmowreader]

13. This can be fixed for $10 per plane with no extra downtime

If unsophisticated terrorists who can't fly Cessnas can magically make a 200-ton plane disappear by flicking a switch, the solution is easy:

1. Get an inch of wire.

2. Remove the transponder breaker from the panel.

3. Solder the inch of wire across the two terminals on the back of the breaker.

This way the only way to shut off the transponder is to throw the main breaker, which kills all the power to the aircraft.

A commercial airliner must be completely dismantled every so often so they can inspect all of its parts. This is the time to hard-wire the transponders on.

The heck with "hijacking alerts." That might be too expensive, but fixing the transponder so you can't shut it off is almost free.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. Turning off the transponders

would not make a plane 'invisible'. The planes would still be visible on radar. And any air traffic controller should have been able to put two and two together, that the planes were purposely being diverted. From there, they should have been able to follow them on the radar and been able to give coordinates to the scrambled jet fighters, that should have been called up to track down the errant planes.

[Corgigal]

17. but they did

however this administration NEEDS some reason to explain why nothing was scrambled while commercial airlines in control airspace went on a sight seeing tour.

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. The reason nothing was scrambled

was because the leaders at the top of the chain of command failed to respond.

Every single one from Bu$h, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers and Tenet failed to respond appropriately. With no one in charge to put the information together and then to issue orders on how to respond, a systemic failure was inevitable.

Even if every single person from the flight controllers to fighter pilots did exactly the right thing, they were doomed to failure because no one was in charge.

Bu$h, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers and Tenet are all guilty of dereliction of duty and treason.

[Corgigal]

20. hear hear

now I'm off to get the gallows ready.

[oceanpoetry]

21. exactly, DoYouEverWonder!

what about radar? transponders were not necessary to locate the planes. The pilots would have scrambled but there was a stand-down order, IMO.

[DoYouEverWonder]

25. There was no stand down order

the leadership knew what was unfolding and purposely sat on their hands for as long as they could.

All four planes were supposed to hit their targets within a few minutes of each other. No one in the world would have ever noticed the deliberate failure in leadership that occurred that day if things had gone according to plan.

What screwed them up was that there was about 45 minutes beaten the WTC and the Pentagon that they had to kill. Then they had to stall and pretend that it was no big deal for a passenger jet to fly into the WTC and within a few minutes another one hits the 2nd tower. None of them went to battle stations, none of them even tried to get more information about the situation. Not one ounce of curiosity between them? No way. Not unless they had to wait for the attack to finish before they could pretend to be great leaders and heroes.

[Almost_there]

27. Tinfoil hat time...

I usually find a grain of truth in conspiracy theories, but, this one seems to lack any grain. A stand down order so the planes could hit? Come on, is the chimp a brilliant, evil dictator, or a moron? Please choose one.

I simply think this gives fodder to the right wing and makes progressives look like totally loonies. I'm not one for theories that Bush and the Jews (in the WTC) knew this was coming.

[2Design]

32. go back to sleep

[leesa]

36. You are soooo far behind in your reading. Please go away until

you have learned something about the subject.

[nodehopper]

43. do some homework.

here is a link.
It's a lot of reading, I know, but presumably if you are on this board you want to be well-informed.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline
I recommend skimming the entire thing, then focusing on the summer before 9/11 and the day of.
there are no tinfoil theories here, no editorials. Just links to media stories.

Also no one in this thread mentioned anything about the Jews in the WTC knowing about the attack.

Don't confuse legitimate questioning of Dubya's actions on that day with some Illuminati zionist conspiracy theory crap.

[I thought so.]

53. Oh Please!

Any asshat can post garbage there.

[nodehopper]

56. yeah, but they don't post their unsubstantiated OPINIONS

they post links to news sources, then you can look at them and decide for yourself. The people running it just arrange it in chronological and thematic order. It's no different than here, and any asshat can post here too and they frequently do.

[Forkboy]

59. Well,you may have found a new home then

[Media_Lies_Daily]

72. That's true on this site, too....

...people like yourself prove it every day.

[number6]

77. thats you

Any asshat

[Almost_there]

61. Even if your paranoid doesn't mean someone's not following you

Sorry to be such a whacko on this board, but, I don't buy into "Bush knew before 9/11", and "Cheney allowed the plane to hit the Pentagon". I know they are bumbling fools, but, I am also somewhat founded in reality, and I don't believe for an iota that ANY President of the United States would want to slaughter their own innocent citizens. If you believe it, please, kick me off this board, flame away, call me "clueless", tell me to "go back to sleep", "bury my head in the sand" and endless names for being so naive.

I simply choose to think that people that buy into conspiracy theories tend to want to believe them, and then they go further, and further, and then the magic bullet came from an alien spaceship sent down by Nixon's brother, who in turn is a member of the shadow government.

I would prefer to go to the polls and exercise my right to vote than wander central park with a hunk of cardboard proclaiming the last days are upon us. And honestly, the louder you scream that I am the nut for not buying into the fact that the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, their cabinet, and dozens of others were in on a conspiracy that has only been discovered by progressives, but, no one else, in a Government that can't keep a secret for more than 20 minutes, give me a break.

Flame away, get personal if you want. I'm going to "go back to sleep" since I am so uninformed about the reality of the world. I'll watch Michael Moore's film and take it as 100% Gospel, since he has no political agenda.

Here's a thought: Try thinking for yourself. Seriously. Use the gray matter, see if what you are saying really makes sense. If it does, well and good. Maybe I am ignoring things. Maybe I am the one that needs the tinfoil hat. But, I have read too many conspiracy web sites that all claim different things.

Remember flight 800? Sure, shot down by a hand held missile fired from a row boat! A ROW BOAT! ugh. Conspiracies get old.

~Almost

[CaptainClark23]

63. I was on the Beach, Flt. 800

Fire Island.

I know what I saw. With hundreds of other people.

And I know what they told me I saw.

No one is trying to make you believe anything. If you don't like other people's perceptions when they contradict yours, thats fine. I'm not gonna judge you.

But don't you dare imply that my "gray matter" is faulty from disuse because I saw something you did not.

[nodehopper]

64. did you look at the link I provided?

The differnce between that website and what you just wrote is that you basically just presented an op-ed, what you BELIEVE. on that website you will find facts from multiple media sources arranged chronologically. Not conspiracy theories, just reports, interviews, etc.

If you go and look at the facts and you still stand by your opinion we can argue about this.
But I don't want to argue with someone who does not have the same information as I do and is not willing to look at it.

You don't "believe" it? Fine, refute the body of knowledge that I am referencing. I don't have crazy conspiracy theories, I don't even believe in MIHOP, but if you read all the press links I think you would begin to seriously doubt that the neo-cons did not know.

And it's "you're" not "your"

[Media_Lies_Daily]

73. And I'll bet that you've never read anything pertinent to the subject...

...at hand.

What do you know about the altitude of Flight 800 when she was shot down?

What do you know about the near impossibility of a gas fumes causing a fuel tank to explode?

What do you know about the material found peppered throughout the area of the plane where the missile was believed to have struck, material not found in any of the original parts of the plane?

[2Design]

31. exactly.......why is du so smart and our govern and media so dumb

and public dumber.....

[glitch]

38. I read somewhere that one of the flights was 20 minutes late taking off

maybe it was the Paul Thompson timeline.

Oh, if your not wearing tinfoil you haven't been paying attention.

[oceanpoetry]

41. I would like to hear what was on the FAA tapes

the ones that were destroyed. Even if an explicit stand-down wasn't given - that is in effect what happened - nothing. So either way the result is the same. There was no military intervention - at a time when there could have and should have been.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

79. Oh, they're guilty of dereliction of duty and treason, no doubt....

...but it's not because they were so confused they didn't know wnat to do. They did nothing because they, at the very least, wanted the events of 911 to happen.

Let's take a look at each of the individuals:

Tenet didn't respond to the events of 911 because he had no control over ANY of the responding ground and air units such as the FAA and NORAD. His job is to gather REAL intelligence and pass it on to the president so that he and his staff can make decisions in regards to the proper response. Unfortunately for us, the last REAL president left office in January 2001, and FratBoy only had ears for the NeoCon OSP operating out of the Pentagon.

Myers claimed he couldn't respond because he was busy in a meeting that just happened to break up when the Pentagon was hit. As the Air Forces ranking Air Defense Officer, he seemed to exhibit a strange lack of decision-making ability. Instead of getting court-martialed, his reward was to be named Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Hmmmm.

Rummy was "out of touch" for about 45 minutes prior to Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, or so he says. Gee, he seemed to have delayed long enough for the attacks to take place, too. Hmmmm. And one more interesting thing...as of June 1, 2001, Rummy had sole authority to approve the launching of interceptor aircraft:

<http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf>

....go to page 8, paragraph b. 1.:

"b. Support. When notified that military assistance is needed in
conjunction with an aircraft piracy (hijacking) emergency, the DDO,
NMCC, will:

(1) Determine whether or not the assistance needed is reasonably
available from police or commercial sources. If not, the DDO, NMCC, will notify the appropriate unified command or NORAD to determine if suitable assets are available and will forward the request to the Secretary of Defense for approval in accordance with DODD 3025.15, paragraph D.7 (reference d)."

And Cheney was in his "undisclosed location" giving orders AFTER all but Flight 93 had crashed to shoot down any airliner that failed to land or operated erratically. Another timely response. And another "hmmmm".

FratBoy said in the classroom doing absolutely nothing for a total of SEVEN minutes AFTER Card told him about the second impact on the WTC. After the seven minutes was over, he THEN proceeded to read a book to the 2nd graders. Junior spent a total of about 40 minutes at the school while Air Force One was supposedly on the list of targets for 911. Hmmmm.

These people weren't inactive because of ANY degree of confusion, they did nothing because they knew that to accomplish the NeoCons' objectives they had to let 911 play out.

<http://septembereleventh.org/airdefense.php>

[Almost_there]

26. Not that sort of radar...

The amount of radar needed to actively (no transponder) find aircraft in this country would the $358,000,000 plus a crap load of people to interpret the data. Current radar is more like a radio signal receiver, it doesn't really "send" a signal out as much as it receives a signal in. The transponder from the plane tells the ground everything it needs. The system was designed with the belief that commercial aircraft in this country would have their transponders on.

I agree that removing the "switch" of the tranponder is a viable solution, but, the problem is that with redundancies, etc, it is probably more complex than we think. You can turn on and off almost every part of a plane from multiple locations in the cockpit, in case of problems.

It is a daunting problem, but, I am think the "always on" transponder is the right first step.

[Eloriel]

68. Yeah - if this story were true, what good would radar do in war?

Which is, I am pretty sure, why radar was developed in the first place -- to locate things that didn't want to be located. Those "things" weren't using transponders, either.

[coyote]

16. Oh this is rich!!!

Invisible airplanes because the transponders were turned off.....BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Billions of dollars for stealth bombers and all we had to do was turn off the transponder....and waaaahla....invisible!!!

These terrorists are so smart.

[LeftHander]

18. Most sophisticated fighters

IN the world with the most advance targeting systems could not see a civilian airliner....that is such bull

[johnnie]

22. This is BS

I seem to recall that on the day of 9-11 the newscasters were reporting that a plane was flying into Penn, and all that crap. They new right where it was. I wish I would have been home to tape the events of that day. Not to mention the countless witnesses that claim they saw other planes in the vicinity of flight 77. Oh well, no one will get the proper blame for the complete inadequacies of that day.

[Geo55]

23. jetliners ‘invisible’"

Damn...better get that "star wars" thingy cranked up seeings how we can't track commercial airliners !

[gasperc]

24. Norad knew... besides how does it help us if FAA knows

the FAA is a civialian authority, once a hyjacking occurs this should immediately be taken over by law enforcement authorities which would immediately use radar equipment that doesn't need transponder signals.

The FAA should never be used to track hostile aircraft

[thecrow]

39. ...and the FAA "threw the tapes of 9-11 in the garbage"..

"by accident"...
How convenient...

[gasperc]

81. good point FAA=useless and Norad isn't accountable

unless a democrat was in office, then it would be a scandal

[Corgigal]

28. So this controller

from this article written Sept 13, 2001 must have been mistaken.

Flight 11's transponder had stopped working. It was no longer sending a radar pulse. The plane's altitude also became a matter of guesswork for controllers, though the Boeing 767 was still visible on radar. Still, the controllers hoped that the plane simply had an electrical problem

link: http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2001/csmonitor091301.html

[chenGOD]

42. How could altitude have been a problem?

Did they solve that problem in WW2?

[I thought so.]

55. No.

Why do you think that we spent millions on the AWACS? No radar sited on the Earth's surface can reveal an object's altitude. Real life has nothing to do with movies or TV.

[Sterling]

74. They spend the money for many reasons.

Mainly because AWACs can get where the war is, which is not usually in the US. It has nothing to do with measuring altitude.

[DoYouEverWonder]

65. Transponder off + plane off course

does not = gee I hope it's just an electrical problem. Transponder off + plane off course = hijacked airplane.

[Liberal Veteran]

30. So basically what they are saying is they were tracking a UFO

...over New York?

I mean, isn't that what an unidentified object is commercial airspace?

And over a major city?

That didn't send any BIG FUCKING RED FLAGS UP?!!!!

Gimme a fucking break.

[bleedingheart]

33. Were they flying Wonder Woman's plane?

cuz I don't believe any of this hooey..

[daa]

35. This story is total BULL

radar has always been a backup to the transponder. The original transponder was called IFF - Identification Friend or Foe. I they told you to put in the code and you didn't you could be shot down. Besides, radar can pick up metal the size of a fly.

[treepig]

40. nobody's mentioned the romulan cloaking devices yet?

seems like as good of an explanation as any.

it still remains to be explained how the hijackers were able to travel into the future to get them, however . . .

[hunter]

45. Trillions $ we've spent on "defense" was rancid pork

That is the horrible secret they are covering up.

[Nlighten1]

54. What a load of crap.

You mean all we had to do all along was turn off the plane's transponders to make them invisible? Just think, we could have won WWII a lot quicker this way.

[Gregorian]

60. But we knew the planes were off course!

How'd we know that, if they were INVISIBLE?

Besides, NORAD would have to have been pretty silly to not think of something so obvious when they were investigating their countermeasures.

[stickdog]

62. Wonder Woman was the 20th hijacker! (nt)

[patcox2]

69. People shouldn't read headlines for technical data.

Everybody is jumping on the word "invisible" as if it were meant to be literally true. The article only says that the FAA lost track of the airplane "in part because" the hijackers turned off the transponder. The other reasons probably being that it was flying in the wrong direction and way off course.

Losing track of a plane does not mean that the plane did not appear on the FAA radar (and they do use active radar). It just means that the blip on the screen no longer has a little label identifying it and giving the altitude.

So this article says that the air traffic controllers didn't know where the plane was. It doesn't mean it wasn't showing up on radar. Lots of planes without transponders show up on radar.

There is nothing absurd about what is happening here, except the imprecise and hyperbolic langauge used to describe what happened. Of course, then the conspiracy theorists go off on flights of fancy based on their assumptions as to what the lay terms meant. This is a translation problem. Media reports use lay terminology. You can't interepret what precisely the media reports mean. You certainly can't then go off and hypothesize why the report is credible or incredible based on your suppositions of what these misused terms mean.

[hunter]

70. "Lots of planes without transponders show up on radar."

Duh. And some of them fly into buildings.

We can spend trillions of dollars on "defense" and we are still fucked.

Maybe if the good old USA didn't piss people off so bad we wouldn't have to worry about crap like this.

[Snazzy]

71. Headline is sensationalism--no fix is the story

The author of the article (and sometimes that article's editor) typically have nothing to do with the headline. A layout person is coming up with something that fits the space and sells papers, often based on an ignorant read.

Sure, the maladmin or the 9/11 comm. might seize on laying blame on transponders or even float a test balloon in an article like this for doing that. I don't think anybody has done that in a sweeping way. It was one problem among many.

The whole issue of transponders being simple to fix and yet have not been fixed is symptomatic of the bs of Homeland Security. After all the spending, is there much of anything that is more secure after 9/11? I think that was the point of the article, which you have to go to papers like the Globe to read. I think it was one of the first Sean Connery Bond's that introduced me to a terrorist changing the transponder. What's that, early 70's?

There are too many sources even for the most suspicious of us mihop/lihop don't-believe-a-word thinkers to say that the transponders weren't turned off. They were. Why hasn't that been made impossible?

There was little coverage of the second of Friday's hearings, which was another round of FAA people. I watched it on the web because I wanted to see Sliney, the other guy who was on his first day on 9/11, essentially operationally in control of the entire country's airspace. He actually came off as more credible and more of an outsider than I expected. For one thing, he pointed out that just a couple of weeks ago, a suspicious plane was headed to New York. And still, today, no one knows who is in charge of scrambling anything. By the time they decided he could, it had already gone past the city.

[Sterling]

75. "Why hasn't that been made impossible?"

Besuase that is not the problem. If it were it would be fixed. Its just the cover story so no one has to go to prison.

[Baclava]

78. Exactly

Approach radars and long range military radars have different capabilities...and the command and control structure is unique to each.

You'd have an easier time explaining how a microwave oven works to a dog than talking radar to lay people.

[Lostnote03]

82. KY Gov.'s plane.....

......the transponder quit almost immediantly upon liftoff from L'ville KY......the ATC system was aware of the problem throughout the flight however for some reason the Secret Service was not imformed of the friendly overflight into D.C. airspace for well over an hour......I'm not certain as to the length of flight time involved however the story just does not add up.....In lieu of the 911 commissions release and based on the record of misimformation from D.C. I am inclined to believe that theater was the order of the day.....