So there’s been some discussion about Sarah Palin’s comment last week in her interview with Katie Couric, where Palin said…

“When you consider even national security issues with Russia, as (Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where – where do they go? It’s Alaska,”

There’s been stuff going around the net about what the heck she was blabbering about, and I figure it’s time to step up with an insider’s perspective and try to straighten it out a bit. To establish my bona-fides, I’ve worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for over 17 years. I am presently an air traffic controller; some of the airspace I control extends out over the Pacific Ocean (towards RUSSIA! And CHINA! I’m qualified to be Vice-President!) and for a couple of years, including on 9/11, I worked as a military liason for the FAA.

As a little more background into this matter, here’s a AP article that tries (poorly) to clarify the situation. Included in it is this:

The spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, Maria Comella, clarified in an e-mail to The Associated Press that when “Russian incursions near Alaskan airspace and inside the air defense identification zone have occurred … U.S. Air Force fighters have been scrambled repeatedly.”

The air defense identification zone, almost completely over water, extends 12-mile past the perimeter of the United States. Most nations have similar areas.

However, no Russian military planes have been flying even into that zone, said Maj. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for the Alaska region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

“To be very clear, there has not been any incursion in U.S. airspace in recent years,” Herritage said.

So who’s telling the truth?

I believe they both are, kinda.

To really look at this, we’re going to have to get educated a bit. Sorry, but it’s true.

AIRSPACE
First of all, there’s multiple types of airspace being discussed here. There’s the “airspace of the United States”, there’s international-but-controlled airspace, and then there’s the “ADIZ”.

• The actual territorial airspace of the United States follows the same boundary as our territorial waters. As a general rule, that is 12 nautical miles off the shoreline. There’s some exclusions and exceptions to this, but that’s generally how it works.
• Everything outside of 12 nautical miles is international airspace- it might be “controlled” by a given nation’s air traffic control (ATC) provider, but that doesn’t mean that nation “owns” it. When we say we “control” such airspace (and we do), we don’t mean that we can keep people out of it if we want; it means that we provide ATC services to airplanes in the area so they don’t smack into one another.

  Signatories to the ICAO agreements basically all agree that civilian aircraft that are registered/licensed in those member states (nations) will operate properly in international airspace. This means that they agree to be “controlled” by the ATC provider for that airspace. For a good portion of the world, that’s the Federal Aviation Administration, because the FAA does the ATC for huge portions of the Pacific Ocean in addition to the US airspace.

  However, in international airspace like that, “state” aircraft are allowed to operate outside of normal ATC procedures. These are government-owned aircraft, which generally means “military”.

  Military aircraft, then, are allowed to fly anywhere they want when they’re in “international” airspace, even if it’s “controlled” international airspace. That means they can fly right up to 12 miles away from the shoreline of the United States.

• Finally, there’s the “ADIZ”. An ADIZ is an Air Defense Identification Zone. ADIZs (ADIZII? ADIZes?) are established by nations to serve as areas where that nation is saying “we declare that we want to know about every aircraft that’s flying in here, and we’ll send our military to do it if we have to”.

  The Alaska ADIZ, like the Pacific ADIZ on the west coast of the United States, starts at 12 miles out and extends to 200 miles out (except where it goes out to Russia’s ADIZ when Russia is less than 400 miles away, in which case the two ADIZs meet halfway).

  The important thing to note here is that an ADIZ, despite being established by a given nation, is actually international airspace, and by treaty and international agreement nations have a right to fly their state-owned (military) aircraft around in there all they damn well please. Likewise, the nation establishing the ADIZ can and will treat it as though it’s a matter of national security to know who’s in that ADIZ at all times.

So now you’re an airspace geek. Congratulations!

PROCEDURES
Inside of the United States doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this discussion, and the different subcategories of airspace are WAY too complicated for a single blog post, so let’s not go there. Okay, that was easy.

When it comes to the ADIZs surrounding the United States, the military unit responsible for watching that airspace is NORAD, which is a joint US-Canada operation. There’s a NORAD unit that does exactly that for the airspace over the US and west of the Mississippi just 40 or 50 miles down the road from me, at McChord AFB outside of Tacoma, Washington. The unit is known as WADS (Western Air Defense Sector) and they have their own web site, so me telling you about it isn’t breaking any kind of secrecy or security!

WADS (for real geeks, their call sign is “Bigfoot”) is a pretty interesting place. I’ve been there on business a few times. Their control room looks a lot like a civilian ATC control room, but also like what you’ve seen in movies.

The various NORAD units watch the ADIZs that are in their areas all the time. I posted a blog quite some time ago (about 9/11, but it’s worth noting here) that has a graphic depicting the locations of the newest FAA/Air Force joint radar units, the ARSR-4. You’ll note that they’re all on the periphery of the US.

When an aircraft gets to a certain range within the coast (in my area it’s at 128 degrees west latitude) they will switch from the oceanic ATC provider (in my case, it’s Oakland Center, which controls something insane like 1/10 of the earth’s surface because their airspace goes from the US almost all the way to Japan, and south to Fiji) to the one for over land (Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center, in my case).

The new center will assign a discrete transponder code to the aircraft (they squawk a “nondiscrete” code of 2000 when they’re over the water) and then radar identify them. This all takes place right about at the outer ADIZ boundary.

Now, NORAD is watching all of this as well. At Seattle Center, we can see the airplane on radar over 200 miles out over the ocean. If the a/c gets closer and hasn’t called us, they’ll still have 2000 on their transponder. At some point (which I don’t exactly know, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you, because it’s a security thing and I don’t want to screw up my security clearance) the NORAD unit responsible for the ADIZ will start to get concerned.

Their first call is to me at the FAA. “Hey, do you know who this target is? Are you in communication with this aircraft?”

If we aren’t talking to them and don’t have a flight plan for the aircraft (and remember, the military planes flying around in international airspace don’t have to have a flight plan) then at some point the NORAD unit will get ready to scramble some fighters.

Our fighters are on varying levels of ready alert at all times… but we don’t have as many of them as you might think. Back in the height of the Cold War, we had many more fighters in alert status, ready to launch with just a few minutes’ notice, but those numbers dwindled to just a few dozen by 2001. (There’s more now, thanks to 9/11, but instead of all being ready to intercept enemies from outside our borders, their duties include being ready to take action within the USA.)

The fighters are launched and go out to identify the aircraft in question. Their procedures from that point onward depend on how close and what type of aircraft it is, and whether or not it establishes some contact with ATC or not. Believe me, if it’s a civilian, they’re going to be getting ahold of ATC as quickly as possible when a fighter jet turns up alongside of it!

When the fighters go out to intercept, they fly through our (FAA’s) airspace. In the area of the intercept, we’ll delegate a big chunk of airspace to the NORAD controllers so they can do their thing with the fighters, but we remain in close contact and coordinate with them (after all, we’re using the same radar, so we can see what’s going on) in case we have any other normally operating civilian flights in the area.

Congratulations, now you’re a fighter intercept geek!

PALIN
So finally we come to Sarah Palin’s claim that she’s got foreign policy experience because Putin and the Russians are coming into US airspace right up there in her neck of the woods. And we’ve got the NORAD spokesman saying that Russians haven’t penetrated our airspace. Who’s telling the truth?

Well… both, really. Kinda.

First of all, it’s pretty well established that the Russians have been operating more flights in the ADIZ lately. There are a number of stories about it in the internet tubes, dating back to well prior to the election- some even quoting the same NORAD spokesman as the Palin stuff now.

Palin’s quote made it sound as though the Russians have actually penetrated the territorial airspace of the United States. The NORAD spokesman said that isn’t so, but he also said that indeed the Russians have been in the ADIZ, and the military has done its job (ie, scrambled jets) in that instance. I think that this story comes the closest to getting it right…

What Palin might have been referring to was a buffer zone of airspace that extends beyond the 12-mile strip. Although not recognized internationally as America’s to protect, the military watches it.

That zone is where there has been increased Russian bomber exercises – about 20 incidents in the last two years. When Russian bombers enter that expanded area, sometimes called the outer air defense identification zone by the military, U.S. or Canadian fighter jets are dispatched to check them, Herritage said.

As you can see, this story more or less confirms both Palin and the NORAD guy. There have been violations of the airspace the US military watches, and Palin was probably informed about that… but the Russkies haven’t actually come into US airspace.

Does this mean Palin deserves a free pass on this one? Not exactly, but it does mean she’s not exactly lying her butt off about it, either.

The reality is this: The governor of the state has absolutely zero to do with what we’re talking about here. It’s all federal and even if it’s a National Guard unit that flies the intercept (as in the case of the 142nd Fighter Wing, the Oregon Air National Guard unit that does the defense job for the northwestern continental US- I work these guys all the time) the state isn’t involved beyond, perhaps, a courtesy briefing and explanation of what that Guard unit is doing.

So Palin’s suggestion that she’s got some kind of foreign policy or military experience stemming from the fact that Air Force fighter jets based in her state are intercepting Russian planes up near her is total bunk. She doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it and doesn’t know WTF she’s talking about.

BUT… she’s right in suggesting that those missions are happening. She’s wrong in saying that it’s over the territorial airspace of the US, but she probably made a layman’s mistake and doesn’t understand the difference between an ADIZ and the actual US airspace. (Most folks don’t, even political leaders.)

If, however, you are willing to grant Palin just a tiny shred of doubt, it’s relatively easy to see that when she said that US fighters are going out to Russian planes “in US airspace”, she’s technically correct because those fighters are doing it in a US ADIZ.

So, as much as it pains me to admit, she wasn’t flat-out lying. In fact, she was doing a very typical politician thing, which is to spin a mostly-truth into something much more to make her own credentials look much bigger.

Kind of like how Al Gore invented the internet, you know.

THE FINAL CONCLUSION (AND WHAT THIS POST WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT ALL THE EDUCATION)
There really isn’t a conflict between what the NORAD spokesman said and what Palin (and the McCain/Palin campaign folks) have said. The NORAD guy is technically correct; no Russians have been in US territorial airspace. Team Palin is technically correct; US fighters have intercepted Russians inside of a US ADIZ.

And Palin’s suggestion that it gives her some kind of foreign policy experience is utterly laughable to anyone who has a basic understanding and education into the reality of territorial or international airspace, or ATC/military procedures for ID on aircraft in ADIZ areas.

…and rightfully so.

The FAA has put the food on my table and the clothing on my back for essentially my entire life. My dad was an air traffic controller, a supervisor, and a manager in the FAA for my entire childhood. I was on my own (ie, not in college sponging off my folks) for about two years before I got hired by the FAA myself, where I’ve worked ever since.

I used to be as proud as could be to have the job of air traffic controller and to work for the FAA. In the agency’s training academy in Oklahoma City, on the walls there were dozens of pictures of people from all the nations on the globe; they’d come to America, to the FAA’s academy, to learn as much as they could from the leader in aviation safety.

Now? I’m still proud to be a controller; there’s only 15,000 14,500 13,000 somewhere around 11,000 fully certified air traffic controllers in the entire United States. (That number keeps dwindling; thanks to FAA policies journeymen controllers are retiring in droves.)

But I’m as embarrassed as could be to work for the FAA. One thing about the agency; our overall leadership has now landed us on The Daily Show, and we’re mocked by one of the best.

Here’s a post that I wrote for another blog I contribute to. It’ll be up there in a day or three, but readers here get an early preview.

Okay. Here’s a perfect example of how nutty the FAA is.

The agency is facing a staffing shortage in nearly every single ATC facility in the country. There’s not a large facility anywhere that doesn’t need to hire trainees- in fact, we needed to hire a big bunch of trainees a couple of years ago and are now desperately behind, but that’s beside the point of this post.

There’s also quite a few CTI program graduates who, despite the agency’s big-time bait-and-switch job, are still wanting to come to work as air traffic controllers for the FAA.

One is a guy, “JT”, who previously ran into some FAA madness when he was offered a job at Atlanta Tracon, then found another just-hired person “R” who was willing to swap facilities with him. R wanted to be in Atlanta, JT wanted to be in New York. Neither of them had even started training in Oklahoma City yet, so it was simply a matter of some paperwork; change R’s to say “going to Atlanta” and put him in JT’s class slot, change JT’s to say “going to New York” and put him in R’s class slot, bang, you’re done.

Didn’t happen. JT wound up getting (this is good) a BILL from the FAA for $65.17, supposedly for overpayment of salary. The problem is that he never actually worked for the FAA; they nixed his swap, nixed him going to Atlanta or Oklahoma City altogether, and just put him back onto the list of eligible people to get hired. But some paperwork had gone through indicating he was an employee, and then terminated; some payroll thing had gone through for a 65 dollar deduction, but since he never actually worked for the FAA they couldn’t withhold it from his pay, so they sent him a bill.

Pretty neat trick. Not only could the agency not handle a simple swap between two guys, but they wind up billing someone for never working for the FAA.

Fastforward. JT is still on the list, but his pre-employement drug test is about to expire. (The testing is only good for a certain length of time, then you have to re-test.) The FAA specialist called him up and said “it’s time to renew your drug test and when it’s done, we’re going to offer you a job and an OKC training date.” He asked where the job offer is and the specialist said “Atlanta Tracon.”

JT is dead-set on going to New York or New Jersey, something in the bigger tri-state area. Why? He’s married. He’s got a father with a terminal illness. He and his wife bought a house. He’s already got a job and it pays more than the 9 bucks an hour he’d make during his stint in OKC; in fact, he makes more than he’d make in his first year on the job as an air traffic controller.

In short, the guy has decided that while he still wants to be a controller, he only wants to do it where he’s at.

Now, this is perfectly logical. It shouldn’t be a problem in ANY way; the FAA has literally a half-dozen large facilities within a reasonable commuting distance of his present home, and every single one of them has job openings. Here’s New York Tracon’s. Here’s a listing for 5 facilities that would all work, and note that three of them say they have “many” openings.

Why can’t the FAA hire this guy to work where he wants to work? Particularly when there ARE people who want to go work in Atlanta Tracon?

It’s utterly insane. He’s going to refuse. He’s trying to decide if he should take the drug test anyway, then tell them “look, it’s one of these facilities or I’m not taking the job, period” or if he should simply skip taking the test since it’ll just waste the agency’s time and money, not to mention his own.

The FAA’s managers and supervisors talk about how they want to “capture the hearts and minds” of the new hires, instead of letting them be influenced by NATCA.

Hey, FAA managers and supervisors? It’s too late. Our agency’s insanity and incompetent hiring procedures have these folks angry at the FAA before they even work for the agency.

And this has nothing to do with NATCA, nothing to do with people like me writing blogs that point out how stupid the FAA is sometimes, nothing to do with the contract negotiations. It’s not political and it’s not someone intentionally subverting the process.

It’s just insane, and it’s 100% the agency’s fault. In today’s day and age there is absolutely zero excuse for this to happen.

An ex-girlfriend of mine works in the HR field. She used to work for Verizon Wireless, and she did hiring and recruiting. She did multiple interviews, drug tests, and pre-employement screening to hire someone to sell cell phones in retail stores.

To freaking sell cellular phones. And what’s more, they managed to hire people into store locations where they wanted to work, and they managed to get it done within a week or two of the store manager informing the HR department that they needed some people for staffing.

It’s utterly pathetic that a kid hired to hawk cell phones can get hired more effectively, more quickly, and wind up with a better image of his new employer than someone getting hired to safeguard the lives of millions of travelers and billions of dollars worth of airplanes in his career.

It’s insane, and there is nobody to blame for this other than the FAA Administrator and the bigwigs in the FAA.

And for those of you thinking about coming to work for the FAA… just so you know… those people in charge totally do not care. These kinds of things have been pointed out to them countless times, and they never do anything about it. They do not care about you and they never will, because if they were going to, they would already.

I hate to sound like a whiner when it comes to my job. I make a pretty dang good sum of money for my job, air traffic control. I don’t apologize for it or feel guilty for it; it’s a highly technical skill that takes years to learn to do well, only a tiny percentage of those who started out trying to get the job are able to wind up doing it, and it’s a job where error can result in hundreds of deaths and millions of dollars in property damage.

At the same time, I recognize that there’s probably a lot of people who could do it, that it’s a good physical environment to work in most of the time compared with jobs that are outside, and other than the things that stress can do to your body or the danger to your mental condition, it’s a pretty safe job.

So all in all, it’s not a bad job.

But man, I hate my employer right now. The actual job function? It’s great. Plugging in, talking to airplanes, moving them around, keeping them safe and getting as many in as efficiently as possible… there’s a weird sense of satisfaction and happiness to jamming your way through a big traffic rush that can really only be understood by another controller.

Other jobs have similar satisfactions, I’m sure.

I hate the FAA, though. I wrote a while back about how the FAA these days only follows their own rules when it suits them, and the manager types just do whatever they darned well please and ignore the rules if they don’t feel like following them.

I had filed a grievance, two of them actually, that detailed my objections to what they did. The grievances were some of the best writing I’ve done in a long, long time. I cited references and pointed out that they were clearly ignoring their own orders. I had an oral presentation where I got to sit down and present my grievances to the facility manager and assistant manager (also known, to those of us who talk “old school FAA”, as the chief and the deputy).

Their response is back, and it’s pathetic. If I were them I’d be embarrassed to show up to work, because they lied. Flat-out lied.

The issue was a pilot complaint about the services that I provided to him. Such complaints are supposed to be handled by our QA department (who does a Quality Assurance Review, or “QAR”) in as quick a manner as possible. Instead, this complaint was handled by the HR department and took months.

Their response claims that the QA office was indeed who handled the response, yet there is no record of a QAR ever having been done. The QAR form has never been filled out. The FAA’s orders on the subject say that the results of the QAR should be communicated to the employee as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours; I didn’t hear anything new about it for weeks. If deficiencies are found, they are supposed to retrain the employee, not punish them; I got a letter of warning as a conduct issue instead of training for a performance issue.

In short, they didn’t do what they’re supposed to do, they didn’t document the things they DID do the way they’re supposed to, and when this was all pointed out to them, they lied about it.

My bosses are, in short, liars. It goes all the way up the food chain, unfortunately; if it were just my local bosses, I could either go above their heads in the grievance process, or I could just wait ‘em out (I’ve had something like 10 or 12 different immediate supervisors in 16 years working here, over 10 facility managers… none of these guys can hold a job) and when the next one comes in, hope they’re better.

It’s a shame, because they’re seemingly very nice, reasonable people. They are, unfortunately, being made into liars by their bosses, and their bosses’s bosses, and so forth right up the line. My immediate bosses have to sign a letter that is full of lies, and it’s really unfortunate. Can you imagine being in a position where you’re forced to do that?

It disgusts me that the FAA has fallen this far. And I’m disappointed that my local bosses don’t have the guts, or the ability, to stand up for what’s right and tell their bosses “no, you’re wrong on this, and the written documentation says so”.

The agency claims that it’s trying to build good, strong “leaders” as supervisors and managers, but the people in charge mistake submission in their subordinates as being true “leadership”. Then they wonder why things keep getting screwed up, because nobody below them has the ability or the guts or whatever to tell the emperor that he’s naked.

Sigh. I don’t mind being told “NO”, as long as it’s backed up by actual evidence. The letter they sent me basically says “we are saying ‘no’ because it’s our right, not because of any written guidance or orders.”

Again, I’m conflicted about my job. The JOB, working airplanes, gobs of fun. Interesting. Challenging, scary, rewarding.

My employer… man, oh man.