On Low Flying Planes In NYC

• Plane flies low over New York City
  Also in photo op were some military "jets"
  Talking Heads all have panties in wad
  Citizens Afraid and now Angry
  Government Says 'Oops. It was a photo -op for Air Force One."
  

My take - The best way to prepare is to prepare in conditions as close to real as can be managed/staged, and this was very likely not a photo op for a publicity campaign. Come on, my peeps! Regardless of how clueless you think of the Obama administration, it is hard to think that they are this clueless.

My answer is that perhaps they are not clueless at all and that instead, this "photo-op" could very well have been an exercise to evaluate the condition of our military and civilian threat response, and an assessment of the reaction of citizens in an urban setting.

In this vein, it is of limited use to notify everybody and his brother that there is going to be a test of the military's ability to intercept a large low-flying airliner, or to tell them the time and place of the "party". If such advance notification is done, then all the intercept crews would be standing at the ready, and the citizens would behave differently than if the exercise happens out of the blue with only those at the highest level in the know.


Thus, if I were the dude in charge (aka El Presidente), I would want to know some of the following:

• How long would it take for FAA or the military nets to alert on an aircraft flying off course? Would they alert at 400 miles out, 100 miles out, or would they be staring at their navels even as the plane was penetrating the New York City limits?
  
• How long would it take for the military jets to be scrambled and to intercept? Would the commanders take decisive action, or would they be paralyzed in fear and take no action because they were waiting for somebody else to tell them to act. (This is especially important in light of the interference of the Office of the President in the Somali pirate incident. )
  
• How alert are the civilians? For example, if we fly this big-ass jet over a cornfield in Iowa as it proceeds on its way to NYC, how many civilians, if any would report the incident? If we got 5,000 calls to 911, that would mean one thing, if we got none, then that would mean another.
  
• If people in NYC see a big plane flying around "low", would they start to evacuate buildings or would they just go about their business? If they got panicky, how did their panic play out? Was it orderly, or was it disorganized? Did they clog the streets, etc. such that emergency crews would be gridlocked?

Also, if I was the dude in charge, I would know that people would get their panties in a wad and excoriate me as being a dunce, but I would also know that the answers to these national preparedness questions outweighs the venom that would be directed my way, and would I know that I would never be able to tell the people what was really going on.

Now, of course, if it was just a photo-shoot then they are indeed clueless, not only because doing such a thing without universal notice is bone-headed, but also because of the very fact that it was just a photo shoot instead of a military preparedness exercise.