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The United States military is now regularly practising how to shoot down civilian aircraft if hijackers again threaten an attack in the pattern of the September 11, 2001 terror strikes.
General Ralph E Eberhart, head of the US Northern Command, said the strongest of safeguards are in place to prevent an accidental or unwarranted shooting down of a commercial plane but commanders, pilots and air defence crews are now drilled on the shoot-them-down procedure as many as four times a week.
"I would take issue with anyone who would say the men and women in our armed forces are trigger-happy. I am more worried that they would be trigger-hesitant than trigger-happy," General Eberhart told reporters in Washington.
The rules, he assured airline passengers, allow for an order to shoot down a civilian plane only if there is no other option. Military jets were in the air during the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, but were too far away to shoot down the planes before they struck.
The Northern Command was created in the wake of 9/11 to coordinate military defence of the US in response to attacks or natural disasters.