More old news; and it's easy to say it was authorized (and continues to be). My question is more along the lines of: what will we say if/when it actually happens? It's really just a matter of time, right? I mean, even the real crazies must be thinking that if they can just hijack a plane, maybe they'll get shot down over a metropolitan area . . . what a sick way to go. The US Air employee who snuck a gun onto a flight and killed the pilots causing nose-down crash in the 80s is the kind of troubled individual I'm thinking of ...
The USAF ran intercept missions throughout 40 years of the cold war against Warsaw Pact air force aircraft; usually the drill was to engage, bulge the muscle, convince them to turn around. Rarely it has involved shooting, and even more rarely a lethal shot. Almost all of it was over water or barren terrain.
We've seen a few airliners get shot down (sometimes even by mistake) but what will we say when the USAF does it to a US airliner over a big US city? I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened already.