Jim

I spent many years in the Air Defense Command (from fighter pilot on
alert to Cmd and Control in a SAGE Block House) and never heard about
any authority to shoot down an aircraft going super sonic as the
criteria.

During the cuban Missile crisis I ran a shift on the Dias in a SAGE
center and we controlled all the fighters in the sector, launching
them and giving them shoot down authority.

Where did you get your shoot down info?

Big John
************************************************** *****************

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:15:03 GMT, wrote:

Kingfish wrote:
On Oct 11, 2:02 pm, Larry Dighera wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:27:13 -0700, Kingfish
wrote in om:

There'll always be a market for SSBJs

They wouldn't useful today for domestic travel. Doesn't that
significantly impact their marketability?

It sure does, but I've recently read about new nose spike technology
being tested to reduce the sonic boom. If it's successful (and can be
applied to a SSBJ) maybe the FAA might reconsider. I can see them
being successful for trans-Atlantic/Pacific use though, range
permitting.

You have to convince more than the FAA to allow supersonic flight
in general.

At one time, supersonic flight over CONUS without prior arrangement,
and especially if coming from outside CONUS, was an automatic shoot down.

I have no idea if that has changed.