Damn Lies

I don’t buy the horsecrap story about a photo op. Something happened here, a fighter pilot called in to a radio program today to describe the classic herding pattern of the F16’s formation which he picked out from the video on the news. He described it as, one in close ready to shoot down and one behind in case the primary get’s hit. I actually got my aeronautical degree because I was planning to join the Air Force. After a couple years I realized I don’t tend to follow rules very well and had fallen for the intricacies of the science in the planes rather than the flight. Anyway, there are a few technical details missing from the media reports. – Nothing unusual there (no sarc). Still I take the word of a trained military pilot pretty seriously.

There are several other reasons why this story about a photo-op is absolute crap. First, in order for one of the presidents planes to be used an alternate backup vehicle must be provided in case primary Airforce one fails (there are two 747’s for that reason). An ex-secret services agent called in to make that point on another radio program. The contingency plans are deeply layered. For instance there’s a plan for bio-attack, dirty bombs, nukes in the city, conventional war, terrorist attack on Washington, snipers and apparently conservative soldiers returning from Iraq. For that reason, the moving of an important asset such as the AF1 backup plane would require substantial restructuring of the contingency plan. Therefore, it’s impossible to conclude that any use of the presidents 747’s would not be very well known by the president. His direct permission is almost certainly required.

Next, for the F16’s to take photos, we need to consider that they are single pilot craft. In a straight line flight on autopilot the pilot may be able to pick up a camera and shoot but it wouldn’t be easy while circling . And it wouldn’t be much of a pic by the little fuzzy dot trailing the 747 in the photo above. So the F16’s probably weren’t there to take nice photos. Besides being very difficult to take from through the window of an F16, wouldn’t you take a helecopter or a nice two seater F18 jet? It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps these had special instrument clusters on the bottom for surveillance but those would hardly be used for PR photos.

Also, it’s important to consider that there isn’t any reason why someone couldn’t just photoshop the 747 in New York and save the $200,000 it probably cost for this flight. Photoshoping the 747 would cost around $75 dollars for me to have it professionally done and you would need image processing algorithms to be able to tell if it was fake.

Another reason this photo shoot is a cover up is that even a liberal socialist president who thinks we need to make nice with terrorists wouldn’t dare fly a 747 low over New York. It simply wouldn’t happen. If we imagine a scenario where the president truly didn’t know about this, it certainly would have had to pass a dozen other people to be approved. Are we honestly to believe that none of them figured out that people might be scared by a low flying jet trailed by F16’s over NY? —Frankly Mr. Obama, I’m not that stupid.

My conclusion, if this is not an out of control airplane there is no possibility that the President, Biden and everyone else in security didn’t know about this flight well in advance. The changes to security from all the possible attack options are too complex. If they did know about it, there was a reason for this which is well beyond my understanding.

This conclusion though by itself isn’t reasonable, because the press secretary spent 5 minutes stammering trying to make an answer. They would have had a pre-written response if this had actually been a photo shoot. They would have absolutely anticipated panic in New York and would have had a statement ready. Do you honestly believe these people didn’t consider it might start a panic to low fly a 747 around NY. Give me a break!

What we are left with is an out of control plane, piloted by someone unknown who took it directly to ground zero in New York for unknown and covered up reasons chased by F16’s in attack formation.

Not that hard to believe.

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Now to the crazy stuff.

We know modern avionics can land a plane like a 747 without a pilot at the controls, it is also possible to fly the plane by remote (i.e. predator style). Is it inconceivable that they built in a plane takeover mechanism which by radio/satellite can incapacitate a pilot, i.e. gas or something and activate a remote landing?

Ignore this part if you want but technically and from a security standpoint, it makes sense to me.