| Flight
93: The Improbable Truth
Robb
Magley
"That
process starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated
all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth."
-
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
Three minutes,
four possible coincidences, and one odd lack of evidence,
have created a problem with the official story regarding the
crash of United Airlines Flight 93.
It begins with
the matter reported in the Philadelphia Daily News
in September 2002 by William Bunch. Several seismologists,
some commissioned by the Department of Defense to investigate
the question, agree that Flight 93 struck the earth at 10:06.
Yet family members allowed to hear the cockpit voice recording
were repeatedly told the tape ended at 10:03, three minutes
before impact.
The problem continues:
shortly before striking the ground, Flight 93 made a dramatic
course change. The doomed airliner turned nearly 90 degrees
to the northwest. The turn, according to aircraft tracking
records at FlightExplorer.com,
occurred at 10:03.
Three minutes
before impact.
A third event
took place when Flight 93's transponder signal, which had
over the course of the hijacking been turned off, and then
on again, ceased transmitting. When NBC's Tom Brokaw interviewed
air traffic controller Stacey Taylor, she told him she had
assumed the worst when the signal stopped that Flight 93 had
crashed.
The signal ended,
Taylor said, at 10:03. Three minutes before impact.
Shanksville-Stonycreek
Elementary school, two miles from Flight 93's impact site,
was evacuated after the crash knocked out electrical power
to the school. The Mayor of the nearby borough of Indian Lake
called the utility company when power to his small town was
disrupted by the crash. In the days to follow, photographs
of the impact point showed a newly repaired power line stretching
over the scene, leading to the reasonable conclusion that
the airliner severed the wires as it hit the ground.
The time of the
outage, however, remains strangely unverifiable.
Understanding
the possible concurrence of these four events requires the
understanding that time, when measured by those involved here,
is a matter of fine precision. Flight recorders, seismologists,
air traffic controllers, and utility companies all depend
upon the accuracy of their clocks tremendously, and even use
tools such as satellites to keep errors to a minimum. These
clocks, if not exactly synchronized, should at most be off
by a matter of a few seconds.
Damage assessment
is perhaps the most difficult supporting technology of all
to develop. Since HPM weapons usually depend on electronic
kill or upset, there is no "smoking hole" as an observable.
- Bacon/Rinehart, "A Brief Technology Survey of High-Power
Microwave Sources", High Power Electromagnetics Department,
Sandia National Laboratories, April 2001
The possibility
is that United Flight 93 crashed as a result of being attacked
by a high-powered microwave weapon, most likely fired from
the C-130 aircraft acknowledged by the Department of Defense
to be present that morning.
This is an incredible
thesis, and requires several points to be addressed in order
to comprehend the idea, much less believe it. First, it must
be shown that such a weapon not only exists, but is operational
within U.S. Armed Forces. Second, it must be shown that evidence
exists of an attack by this weapon on 9/11. In this article,
I will present explanation in three parts:
1) The Case for the Existence of Deployable High Power Microwave
(HPM) Weapons
2) The Case for the C-130 as HPM Platform
3) The Case for an HPM Weapon Discharge on 9/11: Four Events
at 10:03 A.M.
The Case
for the Existence of Deployable HPM Weapons
In order to understand how a microwave weapon might have been
used on 9/11, some historical context for the technology must
be established. The implications of radio frequency (RF) warfare
have been understood since the first significant electromagnetic
pulse (EMP) was observed in 1962 following a nuclear test
blast above Johnston Island in the Pacific. In a test code-named
STARFISH PRIME, a 1.5 kiloton nuclear weapon was detonated
above the island; 1500 kilometers away in Hawaii, streetlights
blinked out, alarms were triggered, and power lines fused
as a result of the blast's EMP.
The disruptive
effect of EMP on electrical systems was not lost on military
planners; but the use of nuclear weapons for the relatively
small-scale effect was deemed less than pragmatic. Over time,
technology was created which could produce EMP without a nuclear
blast, but its effect was difficult to focus. It was also
not immediately apparent to Western forces what operational
use such a weapon would offer over conventional munitions.
But the Soviet
Union recognized the advantages very quickly. Lagging behind
the West in electronics, the USSR saw EMP as a critical technology;
if they could not compete in the development of smaller and
faster electronic weapons, they could exploit their inherent
susceptibility to RF. The Soviets began to develop high-power
microwaves (HPM), a technology which not only required no
nuclear blast, but also could be focused and required a smaller
apparatus to generate.
HPM disrupts electrical
systems very briefly, for around a few hundred nanoseconds.
But in the high-speed world of computer-driven defense technology,
this is long enough to reset chips, record faulty data, and
effectively neutralize any system dependent upon electrical
impulses for its operation.
NATO and former
Soviet nations have developed HPM weapons. These weapons
are designed to exploit this inadvertent vulnerability to
RF power by concentrating as much power as possible into
a controlled field. This has proven very effective, and
anecdotal data suggest successful combat deployment. - A.E.
Pevler, "Security Implications of High-Power Microwave Technology",
IEE International Symposium on Technology and Society, 1997
On September 6,
1976, the West saw its most compelling evidence of how seriously
the Soviet Union took the concepts of HPM weapons. Lt. Victor
Belenko defected from the USSR, landing in Hakodate Airport
in northern Japan in his state-of-the-art Soviet fighter,
the MiG-25. As NATO scientists began to dissect the aircraft,
they discovered its critical communications, target acquisition,
and navigation systems were strangely designed with such antiquated
parts as vacuum tubes where computer chips should be. Such
a system appeared anachronistic until placed in the context
of HPM weapons: this design was nearly impervious (or in the
words of the trade, "hardened") to an HPM attack.
Pulsers developed
at Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute are based upon very
fast (nanosecond and picosecond) solid state "on" and "off"
switches developed by Prof. Igor Grekhov and Dr. Alexi Kardo-Syssoev.
These switches have recently been used to generate 10 nanosecond,
10 KHz pulses... Jammers based upon these switches can be
made small enough to fit into a briefcase. A recent version
is said to weigh 6.5 kg and to deliver fields of 30 kV per
meter at 5 meters. This is comparable to high-altitude EMP
(HEMP) field strength. - Dr. I.W. Merritt, Chief, Concepts
Identification and Applications Analysis Division, Advanced
Technology Directorate, Missile Defense and Space Technology
Center, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, "Proliferation
and Significance of Radio Frequency Weapons Technology",
before the Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress,
25 February 1998
The origins of
the U.S.-developed HPM are difficult to trace. The efforts
gained support during the Reagan administration, when various
directed-energy (DE) concepts were researched in connection
with the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars".
But HPM's trail
becomes more apparent by the early 1990's, as the technology
begins to mature. As early as 1993, the United States Marine
Corps was building such phrases as "...shielding against radio
frequency (RF) and High Power Microwave Weapons effects is
desired" into its operational requirements documents (ORDs)
for assets such as its Technical Control and Analysis Center
(TCAC), a hub for Marine signal intelligence and electronic
warfare (SIGINT/EW) support for air-ground operations. It
must be inferred that by this time, the Department of Defense
did not think it unreasonable to defend against HPM weapons,
and that such a threat must have existed, or been on the verge
of deployment.
Useful documents
in following HPM development include DoD Research, Development,
Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) budget item justification sheets.
These are simply non-classified budget documents which indicate,
for each funded project, the goals, what was done in the previous
fiscal year, what is planned for the following fiscal year,
and how much was and will be spent.
Of particular
interest to the discussion of HPM is how the mission description
and accomplishments have evolved from the quite specific to
the very general as the technology improved, and the desire
for public knowledge of the program diminished. In FY 1994,
for example, the mission includes the phrase:
Technologies
are developed that support a wide range of Air Force missions
such as space control, command and control warfare, and
counter-air warfare.
By FY 2001, the
same project (with a new number):
Technologies
that support a wide range of Air Force missions such as
the potential disruption and degradation of an adversary's
electronic infrastructure and military capability are developed.
Specific missions
such as counter-air warfare are replaced with the idea of
a "potential" disruption of electronics. Of course the new
mission statements do not reflect the growth of the technology;
careful scrutiny of RDT&E documents from 1994 to 2001 show
an increase in funding and technical sophistication, and a
decrease in specificity that suggests a program becoming more
secretive.
In FY 1994, a
new pulse forming network created a 100% efficient ultra-wideband
source. A new pyramidal horn antenna created 70 KV per meter
at a 10 meter range. Solid-state gallium arsenite switches
allowed 10,000 shots, 100 times better than the previous technology.
And in FY 1994, a study on the HPM effects on the F-16 aircraft
and Stinger missile launch tubes was completed.
In FY 1996, advanced
computer modeling which could predict HPM effects on various
aircraft was developed, and subsequent shielding technologies
to harden military assets to HPM created; specifically, specifications,
standards, and maintenance technology for systems including
the F-16, Hawk missile, and F-22 Raptor were developed. "Counter-air
effectiveness analyses" of HPM weapons were completed, and,
most significantly, a contractor was chosen (but not named)
to produce a wideband HPM source for aircraft self-protection.
By FY 1998, the
documents state the ending of the Advanced Concepts Technology
Demonstration, or ACTD, for HPM weaponry. An ACTD is a joint
user/developer effort to demonstrate an operational capability
that meets a military need; it is designed to accelerate application
of mature technologies into the field, usually with the help
of an active warfighting unit. Essentially this is the period
where soldiers and contractors work out details of technical
manuals and operating procedures, a time when a specific piece
of equipment is hauled into the field and subjected to whatever
hardships the soldiers deem necessary, while the contractor
provides tech support and advice as the equipment is integrated
into use.
Ended the
ACTD. Demonstrated the capability to neutralize specific
targets in a real-world environment. Validated logistics,
training, and maintenance assumptions applied to the operational
use of this specific system. - PE 0603750D8Z, RDT&E Budget
Item Justification Sheet
In FY 2000, a
single-shot HPM device was field tested for control of enemy
air defenses, and components for repetitively-pulsed narrowband
HPM (power, sources, and antennae) were developed.
FY 2001 saw the
development of frequency-agile HPM sources, as well as increasingly
sophisticated computer modeling and the "completed design
of subscale breadboard multiple-shot HPM for airborne attack".
Obviously HPM was by now considered serious weapons science.
Bits and pieces
of information regarding HPM have surfaced in various official
military documents, with the clear pattern that the technology
is mature and deployable (and thus probably deployed):
LFT&E [Live
Fire Test and Evaluation] has supported the development
of prototype high-power microwave (HPM) weapons and tests
of these devices at DoD open-air ranges since FY97. - FY01
Annual Report, "Vulnerability Assessment to Radio Frequency
Threats", The Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E)
Several high
power microwave technologies have matured to the point where
they are now ready for the transition from engineering and
manufacturing development [EMD, the stage after ACTD] to
deployment as operational weapons. - "High Power Microwaves:
Strategic and Operational Implications for Warfare", Col.
E.M. Walling, USAF, Occasional Paper 11, Center for Strategy
and Technology (Air War College)
There is even,
interestingly enough, a Directed Energy Professional Society,
which has put out a newsletter since 2000:
Past DEPS activities
have focused mostly on lasers with minimal high power microwave
representation. I believe that this was principally because
of the greater funds being spent on lasers and the greater
informational release restrictions on high power microwaves.
Future DEPS activities should provide a more balanced view
of directed energy. The last issue of this newsletter featured
the very popular high power microwave active denial system.
It is currently the only HPM application that can be discussed
publicly, but many other HPM applications can be discussed
within the DEPS classified forums. - William L. Baker, "Wave
Front: The Directed Energy Technical Newsletter", Winter
2002
The Case
for the C-130 as HPM Platform
As one peruses the available literature regarding HPM, two
aircraft continually gain mention: the F-16, and the C-130.
The constant appearance of the F-16 is no great surprise;
it is common knowledge that the F-16 and its LANTIRN pods
underwent significant HPM testing and hardening in the mid-1990s.
The Phillips
Laboratory just completed a multiyear program to measure
and understand the effects of HPM on an F-16 testbed aircraft...
As part of this program, the susceptibility of the low-altitude
navigation and targeting IR system for night (LANTIRN) to
electromagnetic radiation was measured and hardening countermeasures
developed and demonstrated. This technology was transitioned
to the LANTIRN System Program Office (SPO) for implementation.
- Dr. W.L. Baker, AF Phillips Labs, "Air Force High-Power
Microwave Technology Program", Aircraft Survivability Newsletter,
Fall 1995
The greater mystery
is the ubiquity of the C-130.
At present we
think of large aircraft as bombers, tankers, surveillance
aircraft, or air launched cruise missile launch platforms.
In the future, large aircraft will be the first to carry
directed energy weapons. - New World Vistas: Air and
Space Power for the 21st Century, Air Force Scientific
Advisory Board, 1995
The United States
has supplied major weapons system to its allies for decades.
In the case of technologies that are relevant to microwave
weapons, a number of nations now own F-16 and C-130 aircraft...
- Col. E.M. Walling, ibid.
There are a few
obvious advantages to the C-130 when discussing HPM weaponry.
The most obvious is its remarkable payload abilities; any
HPM weapon that could produce a beam of enough power to do
damage would of necessity be large and heavy, especially in
its infancy. Less obvious are issues such as the C-130's quite
capable electrical system, which without modification could
run a hundred hairdryers simultaneously, and the fact that
a C-130 can fly with even a total electrical failure. This
latter could be useful in the field of unpredictable RF weapons.
And the EC-130E variant already has acknowledged microwave-powered
equipment which sends out high energy RF output for interference.
The USAF supports
the feasibility of developing an RF gunship within the next
decade that can target tanks and other ground vehicles much
the way today's AC-130 Gunship performs its mission. - B.
Hillaby, "Directed Energy Weapons Development and Potential",
the Defence Associations National Network News, July 1997
The Case for
an HPM Weapon Discharge on 9/11 - 10:03 A.M.
Three, and likely four, interesting things occurred at the
same time, 10:03 A.M., on the morning of 9/11 in and over
Pennsylvania. Individually, each can be explained by a less
outlandish theory than an HPM discharge, but taken as a group,
another comprehensive explanation remains elusive.
First, the FBI
has confirmed that aboard United Flight 93, the cockpit voice
recording (CVR) ends at 10:03. This was reported as a significant
event, primarily because the Army's own study of seismic data
indicates that the plane's impact occurred three minutes later.
Prosaic explanations for this included the effect of a total
electrical failure aboard the airliner. In this discussion,
however, such a failure becomes much more interesting.
Second, at 10:03,
Flight 93 makes a dramatic change in course. This is another
confirmed event, thanks to FlightExplorer's accurate aircraft
tracking software. Again, a change in heading is not in itself
significant; it is the timing which bears investigation. Third,
the transponder signal from Flight 93, which had been turned
off, then on again, ceases transmitting. This was confirmed
by the NBC interview between Tom Brokaw and air traffic controller
Stacey Taylor, and at the time the assumption was that at
10:03, the airliner had crashed. Since this has been determined
not to be the case, again the timing of the event increases
it's significance.
The fourth event
to take place was a power outage on the ground.
Students who
attend the nearest elementary school, Shanksville Elementary,
two miles from the crash site, were evacuated earlier after
the midmorning crash knocked out power to the school. -
"Officials, media swarm over site", Peirce/Erdley, Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review, 9/12/01
Barry Lichty,
the mayor of Indian Lake Borough, said the ground shook
and the town's electricity went out. He called the utility
company to find out the cause. - "Crash rattles home, neighbors",
ibid.
Early photographs
released by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
(PDEP) show a newly repaired power line stretching over Flight
93's crash site. The conclusion could be that the airliner
severed the electric wires as it hit the ground.
The question is
whether the power outage began before the line could have
been severed.
This was not an
easy piece of information to obtain. I first tried to retrieve
outage records from Penelec, the First Energy Company which
services Shanksville and its school (circuit 00017-12). Interestingly,
and to my customer service representative's amazement, there
is no record of the outage on their overview screens. The
rep also checked nearby accounts on Melva Rd, Lake Shore Rd,
Marilyn Way, Main St., Stoney Creek Rd, and Lake Stoney Creek
Rd. We were both startled to find that there was no record
of an outage at any of these nearby accounts.
An electrical
disruption onboard Flight 93 explains the why the CVR stopped
recording. The same disruption explains the transponder signal
going silent. It can also explain the sudden course change
as the electronic components of the aircraft fail. But it
is the suggestion of the coincident electrical failure in
the air, and that in the power grid on the ground, which speaks
to a single source which could cause both disruptions: a high
power microwave pointed at the aircraft, affecting both its
avionics and electrical systems on the ground.
Some Final
Thoughts
The significance
of the perturbation [caused by an HPM attack] is proportional
to the importance of the system corrupted. A portable compact
disc player may react by garbling music or changing the
track it was playing. A similar amount of energy directed
at a commercial aircraft could corrupt the plane's control
and navigation systems enough to cause a crash. - A.E. Pevler,
ibid.
HPM was "sold"
early on as a desirable weapons system for several reasons.
First, it is "nonlethal", in that it targets equipment, not
people; it feels like the moral equivalent of the Lone Ranger
shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand. It is very stealthy,
in that it leaves no evidence within its target of its attack.
It is an easy technology to keep secret, since the development
has been so vastly underreported; the idea sounds much like
science fiction, a "death ray" only deadly to electronics.
One early argument
against a shoot-down scenario regarding Flight 93 was that
it would be impossible to keep secret, and too risky to try;
anyone on the ground could be holding a camcorder these days,
and could inadvertently capture the image of a missile streaking
towards the airliner. A critical point brought up early in
HPM development, and reiterated after the "CNN-ization" of
the Gulf War, was that no television camera could ever record
an HPM attack, since its own electronics would be ruined by
the wide swath of microwave energy.
The history of
classified weapons systems speaks to what the late Ben Rich,
former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works (home of the SR-71 Blackbird
and the F-117A Stealth Fighter) called "silver bullet" systems.
These are breakthrough technologies, applied to Defense, which
are held in secret and not revealed until absolutely necessary.
The advantage to this is that any potential enemy cannot begin
to defend against what they don't know you even have.
A good example
comes from Rich's own company. The F-117A stealth was operational
well before its "debut" in the Gulf War; in fact, planning
was quite far along to use the aircraft to bomb Khaddafi.
At the last minute, "conventional" aircraft were sent instead,
Libya having been considered not a crucial enough target to
jeopardize the secrecy of the stealth program.
This thinking
is quite relevant to the events of 9/11. If an HPM weapon
could have been deployed over Pennsylvania that morning, strategists
were offered an easy choice. If this non-lethal weapon worked,
they had the advantage of not having "really" fired upon U.S.
citizens; they were shooting at the electronics. If it didn't
work, there were still fighters over Washington, D.C., and
more drastic measures could be taken as Flight 93 approached
the nation's capitol. Either way, there was no chance of the
weapon's secrecy being compromised, since no record of the
attack could exist.
(This also, interestingly,
suggests why the fighters themselves were not ordered towards
the doomed airliner; hardening technology notwithstanding,
the safer bet would be to keep the valuable aircraft and pilots
away from the HPM weapon.)
Sadly, none of
the above can constitute definitive proof that Flight 93 was
brought down by HPM. The only thing that could would be a
government or military source confirming events as outlined
here, and given the nature and record of classified programs
(and those involved in them) that seems quite unlikely.
However it is
still possible that someone who took part in these events
may eventually come forward. There are heroes possibly yet
unsung, not only the passengers and crew of Flight 93, who
gave their lives in defense of their country, but also those
who risked their own safety and the exposure of a secret weapon
whose implications are changing the face of modern warfare
who risked all this to protect not only our nation's capitol,
but also its sense of conscience.
email:
rmagley@independence.net
homepage: http://members.fortunecity.com/seismicevent/
sources: http://members.fortunecity.com/seismicevent/links.html
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