New kind of threat keeps Guard up

PORTLAND — When he was a young fighter pilot stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, Brad Applegate frequently tailed Soviet bombers as they traveled to Cuba in a game of Cold War cat and mouse.

"That's the environment we were trained in," recalled Applegate, now a colonel and vice commander of the Oregon Air National Guard's 142nd Fighter Wing.

But since Sept. 11, the military's mission has been turned homeward, and upside down, as never before.

"Now the bad guys are flying our own airplanes," Applegate said. "Who would have guessed?"

Scrambled within minutes of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the unit's squadron of F-15 fighters has been flying regular patrols over Seattle, Portland and other potential targets in the Northwest.

But instead of monitoring for conventional attacks from overseas as it has for more than 50 years, the unit now watches for stray commercial airliners and private planes flying in a suspicious manner.

The new mission has meant plenty of soul searching for the unit's 30 pilots, more than half of whom fly for commercial airlines when they're not on active duty.

Before Sept. 11, the notion of firing on a passenger jet was unthinkable. Now, after planes were turned into terrorist weapons on the East Coast, it's expected procedure.

Pilots readily admit they agonize over the possibility of pulling the trigger on hundreds of airline passengers, even if it means saving thousands of lives in a building below.

Standing in the unit's headquarters at the Portland Air National Guard Base, "Tug," a rugged linebacker of a pilot who flies 737s for United Airlines, paused for a long moment before echoing the response of most of his fellow pilots.

"You just couldn't imagine taking your own countrymen's lives," said "Tug," who for security reasons is identified only by his call sign. "But would you do it? Of course you would, if you were ordered to."

"It's almost something you can't contemplate," added "Sluggo," who flies a regular 767 route from Los Angeles to Hawaii, also for United. "I think I'd rather ram the thing, then you wouldn't have to live with it."

The 142nd Fighter Wing's 245-acre base shares a runway with Portland International Airport along the Columbia River.

From inside the unit's "alert barn," pilots can see jumbo jets taking off and landing by the minute. It's a constant reminder that, in this new world, those jets are potential "bogies," or hostile aircraft.

The Air National Guard pilots operate in 48-hour shifts, passing the time reading, working out or watching the barn's big-screen television.

Before Sept. 11, the base was home to 225 full-time officers and active-duty airmen. Since the attacks, more than 700 additional Guard members have been called to active duty. Maintenance crews and support staff work around the clock to keep the squadron's planes airworthy, turning the once-quiet operation into a hub of nonstop activity.

Beginning in the 1950s, the United States began to dramatically reduce the number of aircraft it kept on 24-hour alert, partly in response to improved radar technology and partly because of tighter budgets, said Maj. Barry Venable, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, commonly known as NORAD.

By 2001, the number on 24-hour alert had dropped from 5,800 in 1958 to just 20 aircraft nationwide.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, that number has increased to more than 100. The number of alert stations — the Portland base had been one of seven — has grown to 26. The 142nd unit has gotten a second, undisclosed alert site in the Northwest.

The increases are among the most tangible examples of how homeland security has been stepped up since the attacks.

Between Sept. 11 and Dec. 10, Air Guard fighters were scrambled or diverted from regular patrol missions 207 times to investigate suspicious aircraft, compared with 14 scrambles during the same period last year.

In the most serious homeland-defense mission since Sept. 11, Air National Guard F-15s on the East Coast were scrambled a little over a week ago to intercept an American Airlines flight heading from Paris to Miami. The plane was carrying a passenger with explosives in his shoe. The man — who according to federal investigators had connections to al-Qaida — was subdued by the crew and passengers, and the jets safely escorted the aircraft to Boston's Logan International Airport.

It takes just minutes to get a plane in the air. That's not always quick enough.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts received the order to scramble at 8:46 a.m., about the same time American Airlines Flight 11 hit the first World Trade Center tower.

Six minutes later, two F-15s were in the air hurtling at more than 500 mph toward New York City. The fighters were 70 miles away — about 8 minutes of flying time — when United Airlines Flight 175 hit the second tower at 9:02 a.m.

Not long after that, the 142nd, 3,000 miles away, received its first order to intercept a Chinese airliner bound for California. The passenger plane, out of radio contact with air traffic controllers, was unaware of a federal order grounding all air traffic.

During the terrorist attacks, nearly a dozen commercial jetliners were either off course or out of contact when the first plane hit the twin towers.

A pair of F-15s reached the Chinese plane off the coast of Vancouver Island. The fighter pilots could see the astonished faces of passengers in every window, their cameras clicking, as the military jets swept alongside bulging with 20-mm cannons and sidewinder missiles.

The fighters escorted the airliner to Vancouver International Airport, which for a time became a parking lot of grounded passenger planes.

Seeing those faces was an immediate indication of how the world had changed for the 142nd.

"This is hours after we had four smoking holes, you know," said "B-9," a full-time military pilot who keeps a poster of John Wayne on his office wall at the Portland base. "This is something that no one ever dreamed of doing."

Over the next 48 hours the 142nd intercepted several commercial and private planes that were off course, out of radio contact, or unaware of the Federal Aviation Administration's order to ground all flights.

Among the intercepts was a chartered air ambulance carrying a heart from Alaska to Seattle for a time-sensitive transplant operation.

Nearly four months later, the patrols have become less frequent than the nonstop sorties flown in the first 48 hours after the attacks.

But the notion of firing on a passenger jet is still haunting. For that reason, the unit has paid special attention to communication links, said "B-9," ensuring that when the order comes, the pilots know unequivocally that it's the real thing.

"If the word comes down to hit the pickle button, we have to trust the people above us," said "B-9," the father of a newborn son. "And they have to trust that when they ask me to do it, I can do it."

This jumped out at me. Hard choice to make.

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