Global guardian? Too bad that is a known about yearly activity NORAD conducted.. Wouldn't you gather as much intelligence on your enemy first to make your first strike have optimal effect? Do the attack while an exercise is being conducted and it only adds to the chance of success.


Pre 9/11 NORAD's only role was to protect American soil from foreign attacks. And after the cold war ended, took heavy budget cuts. There radar systems where only monitoring flights coming into the US. They didn't monitor domestic flights because it wasn't thought of that enemy aircraft would takeoff and land from our own soil. If the aircraft was hijacked while flying over the ocean, or Russia was sending over a fleet of bombers, then they would have had plenty of time to scramble jets to intercept. Even if NORAD somehow got a stand down order it wasn't there duty to begin with, and by the time the did locate those flight it would have been too late.. just like what happened that morning. When you talk about NORAD and 9/11 its like comparing the FCC to asteroid monitoring or the US coast guard to mountain rescue.

History of NORAD