Sept. 11, 2001, a giant exercise called Global Guardian occupied Buckles and the rest of the U.S. Strategic Command’s staff at Offutt Air Force Base, along with military personnel at several other U.S. bases.
As the terror attacks unfolded, Global Guardian gave way to a real-world catastrophe. Though StratCom monitored the landings of thousands of civilian aircraft and accommodated a short-notice visit from President George W. Bush, the 9/11 attacks exposed big gaps in America’s readiness for terrorist attacks.
“9/11 was a reset button for the whole national strategy,” said Buckles, now 80, of Papillion.
The nation’s command and control system — of which StratCom is a key part...
“Our sensors on 9/11 became CNN. It was the television that was telling us about the actual attack. There was no warning,” said Buckles, who was then StratCom’s deputy director of operations. “As we found out, we had totally postured wrong.”
Global Guardian had been going on for more than a week, and much of the effort had been concentrated at StratCom and other military headquarters around the country.
By Sept. 11, though, the exercise had expanded into the real world. Dozens of nuclear weapons had been loaded aboard strategic bombers at U.S. air bases in Louisiana, North Dakota and Missouri. Ballistic-missile crews in the western Great Plains were on alert. So were several Trident submarine crews. Three Offutt-based E-4B command aircraft already were airborne.
“It was surreal, in a sense,” said retired Adm. Richard Mies, who commanded StratCom at the time. “We were preparing for an attack by this fictitious country, Sloumonia.”
Then things got real.
Mies had stopped by Offutt’s Officers’ Club to have breakfast with some VIPs who were in town for Warren Buffett's charity golf tournament. Then he planned to escort them on a brief tour of StratCom’s famous underground command center.
During breakfast, Mies learned that a plane had struck at the World Trade Center.
“A few minutes later I heard about the second plane,” recalled Mies, 72, now retired and living in Fairfax, Virginia. “I realized it was a terrorist attack.”
Canceling the VIP tour, Mies returned to his command post at StratCom. He quickly pulled the plug on Global Guardian so the military could focus on the terror crisis.
Base security was hiked to its highest level.
The Federal Aviation Administration, in consultation with the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs — the unit charged with protecting U.S. airspace from exterior threats — quickly decided to land all of the more than 3,000 commercial and civilian aircraft across the country.
No one knew which ones, if any, had been commandeered by terrorists.
“You have an event you’ve never anticipated,” Mies said. “There was a lot of uncertainty in all our minds. You didn’t know if it was the first wave of a much broader attack.”
In the early stages of the attack, the nation’s civil defense system, including StratCom, was as shocked and confused as anyone.
“For a while there was chaos as we figured out the real picture,” Buckles said. “While we functioned and got the job done, it didn’t match what everyone had been trained for.”
StratCom monitored NORAD’s communications and kept abreast of President Bush’s moves through contacts in the White House and the Pentagon. Bush was reading to schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida, when he learned of the attack.
One screen on the wall of the command post at StratCom kept track of planes that were thought to have been hijacked. American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, never made the list, Buckles said. United Airlines Flight 93 was at first thought to be headed toward Chicago’s Sears Tower before it turned east. Passengers stormed the cockpit, preventing an attack on the Capitol or the White House. Fears also were raised about two flights, from Denver and Madrid, but those planes landed safely.
“We have to look at every one of these aircraft as a possible threat,” Buckles said.
The Air Force was especially concerned, Buckles said, that a hijacked jet might try to crash into the bomb-laden B-52s on the tarmac at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He said such an act wouldn’t have set off a nuclear blast, though it might have caused a large explosion.
“You would destroy half of Bossier City, Louisiana, with the explosions,” Buckles said. “That would have been a way to really cripple us. All these nuclear weapons were exposed.”
Early in the day Mies considered the possibility that Bush might fly to Offutt. He asked the 55th Wing to prepare Quarters 13, a building for VIP guests on General’s Row, for the presidential party just in case.
“Without knowing whether he would come or not, we had started making preparations,” Mies said. “We didn’t know how long the president might have to stay.”
Air Force One was in Florida with little fuel and limited communications. The Secret Service didn’t want Bush to return to Washington, D.C., until the city could be secured. So he was flown to Barksdale — where airmen had begun to unload nuclear bombs from the B-52s — because it had the best set-up for secure refueling.
Only after Bush left Barksdale did military leaders at Offutt find out that the president was headed their way.
“We knew about half an hour out,” Mies said. “I didn’t want a lot of pomp and circumstance at that point.”
Air Force One landed about 1:50 p.m., escorted by two F-15 fighter jets. Mies picked up the president in his car and drove with him to StratCom’s underground command post. They entered through a fire escape in front of the building — the only time Mies ever used it.
StratCom leaders briefed Bush while setting up a secure video link for him to meet with the National Security Council and other senior government officials. That meeting convened at 2:30 p.m.
“There was a lot of discussion about how to get New York and Washington back to some sense of normalcy,” Mies said.
Bush thought it was critical to get back to Washington. With the nation’s airspace now cleared, the Secret Service deemed it safe for him to return to the White House. He left Offutt aboard Air Force One at 3:36 p.m.
A 60-member battle staff, working 12-hour shifts, kept the command post operating even after the crisis had passed.
“It was two days before StratCom even started to get back to normal,” Buckles said.
He got home about 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 11. Only that evening did he find out that his son, a military officer working that day in the Pentagon, had gotten out safely.
“I remember sitting on the back deck, kicking my shoes off, drinking a scotch,” Buckles said. “It wasn’t until that night I started comprehending what had happened.”
The attack forced the U.S. military, and the entire government, to confront a foe in a way that they hadn’t seriously considered before. Leaders at StratCom and NORAD realized that they had been well-prepared to counter the fictional threat that they prepped for in Global Guardian, but not for the real enemy that confronted them on 9/11.
“It was kind of a bolt out of the blue,” Mies said. “It awakened us to a whole new potential range of scenarios.”
Before 9/11, StratCom’s mission had focused almost entirely on preparing for a nuclear war.
“StratCom was centered on offensive systems, not defensive,” Mies said. The 9/11 attack “alerted us to the kind of terrorism we hadn’t planned for.”
The following year, StratCom merged with the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs — a move that brought space warfare, cyberwarfare and full responsibility for countering weapons of mass destruction into StratCom’s mission.
Soon after, the U.S. Northern Command and the Department of Homeland Security were created to focus on the defense of America against future 9/11-style attacks.
Suddenly there was a whole range of new threats for StratCom’s planners to fret about.
“The whole world changed after 9/11,” Buckles said. “That was quite a day.”
Mainstream "When ragheads attack" bullshit + facts.
Sept. 11, 2001, a giant exercise called Global Guardian occupied Buckles and the rest of the U.S. Strategic Command’s staff at Offutt Air Force Base, along with military personnel at several other U.S. bases.
As the terror attacks unfolded, Global Guardian gave way to a real-world catastrophe. Though StratCom monitored the landings of thousands of civilian aircraft and accommodated a short-notice visit from President George W. Bush, the 9/11 attacks exposed big gaps in America’s readiness for terrorist attacks.
“9/11 was a reset button for the whole national strategy,” said Buckles, now 80, of Papillion.
The nation’s command and control system — of which StratCom is a key part...
“Our sensors on 9/11 became CNN. It was the television that was telling us about the actual attack. There was no warning,” said Buckles, who was then StratCom’s deputy director of operations. “As we found out, we had totally postured wrong.”
Global Guardian had been going on for more than a week, and much of the effort had been concentrated at StratCom and other military headquarters around the country.
By Sept. 11, though, the exercise had expanded into the real world. Dozens of nuclear weapons had been loaded aboard strategic bombers at U.S. air bases in Louisiana, North Dakota and Missouri. Ballistic-missile crews in the western Great Plains were on alert. So were several Trident submarine crews. Three Offutt-based E-4B command aircraft already were airborne. “It was surreal, in a sense,” said retired Adm. Richard Mies, who commanded StratCom at the time. “We were preparing for an attack by this fictitious country, Sloumonia.”
Then things got real.
Mies had stopped by Offutt’s Officers’ Club to have breakfast with some VIPs who were in town for Warren Buffett's charity golf tournament. Then he planned to escort them on a brief tour of StratCom’s famous underground command center.
During breakfast, Mies learned that a plane had struck at the World Trade Center.
“A few minutes later I heard about the second plane,” recalled Mies, 72, now retired and living in Fairfax, Virginia. “I realized it was a terrorist attack.”
Canceling the VIP tour, Mies returned to his command post at StratCom. He quickly pulled the plug on Global Guardian so the military could focus on the terror crisis.
Base security was hiked to its highest level. The Federal Aviation Administration, in consultation with the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs — the unit charged with protecting U.S. airspace from exterior threats — quickly decided to land all of the more than 3,000 commercial and civilian aircraft across the country.
No one knew which ones, if any, had been commandeered by terrorists.
“You have an event you’ve never anticipated,” Mies said. “There was a lot of uncertainty in all our minds. You didn’t know if it was the first wave of a much broader attack.”
In the early stages of the attack, the nation’s civil defense system, including StratCom, was as shocked and confused as anyone.
“For a while there was chaos as we figured out the real picture,” Buckles said. “While we functioned and got the job done, it didn’t match what everyone had been trained for.” StratCom monitored NORAD’s communications and kept abreast of President Bush’s moves through contacts in the White House and the Pentagon. Bush was reading to schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida, when he learned of the attack.
One screen on the wall of the command post at StratCom kept track of planes that were thought to have been hijacked. American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, never made the list, Buckles said. United Airlines Flight 93 was at first thought to be headed toward Chicago’s Sears Tower before it turned east. Passengers stormed the cockpit, preventing an attack on the Capitol or the White House. Fears also were raised about two flights, from Denver and Madrid, but those planes landed safely.
“We have to look at every one of these aircraft as a possible threat,” Buckles said. The Air Force was especially concerned, Buckles said, that a hijacked jet might try to crash into the bomb-laden B-52s on the tarmac at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He said such an act wouldn’t have set off a nuclear blast, though it might have caused a large explosion.
“You would destroy half of Bossier City, Louisiana, with the explosions,” Buckles said. “That would have been a way to really cripple us. All these nuclear weapons were exposed.” Early in the day Mies considered the possibility that Bush might fly to Offutt. He asked the 55th Wing to prepare Quarters 13, a building for VIP guests on General’s Row, for the presidential party just in case.
“Without knowing whether he would come or not, we had started making preparations,” Mies said. “We didn’t know how long the president might have to stay.”
Air Force One was in Florida with little fuel and limited communications. The Secret Service didn’t want Bush to return to Washington, D.C., until the city could be secured. So he was flown to Barksdale — where airmen had begun to unload nuclear bombs from the B-52s — because it had the best set-up for secure refueling.
Only after Bush left Barksdale did military leaders at Offutt find out that the president was headed their way.
“We knew about half an hour out,” Mies said. “I didn’t want a lot of pomp and circumstance at that point.”
Air Force One landed about 1:50 p.m., escorted by two F-15 fighter jets. Mies picked up the president in his car and drove with him to StratCom’s underground command post. They entered through a fire escape in front of the building — the only time Mies ever used it. StratCom leaders briefed Bush while setting up a secure video link for him to meet with the National Security Council and other senior government officials. That meeting convened at 2:30 p.m.
“There was a lot of discussion about how to get New York and Washington back to some sense of normalcy,” Mies said.
Bush thought it was critical to get back to Washington. With the nation’s airspace now cleared, the Secret Service deemed it safe for him to return to the White House. He left Offutt aboard Air Force One at 3:36 p.m.
A 60-member battle staff, working 12-hour shifts, kept the command post operating even after the crisis had passed.
“It was two days before StratCom even started to get back to normal,” Buckles said. He got home about 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 11. Only that evening did he find out that his son, a military officer working that day in the Pentagon, had gotten out safely.
“I remember sitting on the back deck, kicking my shoes off, drinking a scotch,” Buckles said. “It wasn’t until that night I started comprehending what had happened.” The attack forced the U.S. military, and the entire government, to confront a foe in a way that they hadn’t seriously considered before. Leaders at StratCom and NORAD realized that they had been well-prepared to counter the fictional threat that they prepped for in Global Guardian, but not for the real enemy that confronted them on 9/11.
“It was kind of a bolt out of the blue,” Mies said. “It awakened us to a whole new potential range of scenarios.”
Before 9/11, StratCom’s mission had focused almost entirely on preparing for a nuclear war. “StratCom was centered on offensive systems, not defensive,” Mies said. The 9/11 attack “alerted us to the kind of terrorism we hadn’t planned for.”
The following year, StratCom merged with the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs — a move that brought space warfare, cyberwarfare and full responsibility for countering weapons of mass destruction into StratCom’s mission.
Soon after, the U.S. Northern Command and the Department of Homeland Security were created to focus on the defense of America against future 9/11-style attacks. Suddenly there was a whole range of new threats for StratCom’s planners to fret about. “The whole world changed after 9/11,” Buckles said. “That was quite a day.”