Pentagon Scrambled F-16s to Guard New York
NewsMax Wires
Friday, Aug. 15, 2003
The U.S. military went on alert just minutes after power blackouts hit New York and other major cities -- and the Pentagon quickly scrambled two F-16 Fighter jets into the air to guard American airspace, including New York.
Though federal authorities quickly assessed the situation and determined a terrorist incident was not at play, government officials left nothing to chance.
The Washington Post reported that shortly after word of power outages hit Washington, a massive conference call was established among “the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in addition to other agencies.”
"It was pretty clear pretty quickly that the blackout was a power plant problem," one Pentagon source told the Post.
Still, Pentagon officials decided to increase the number of combat jets over the Northeast in the hours after the power failures hit.
Since Sept. 11, North American Aerospace Defense command (NORAD) has been assigned the task of monitoring the skies for threats or unusual activity. They were also put on a heightened state of alert.
