[Tellurian]

Better question would be was it a lawful order or not.

Good point.

[eldoradude]

It would make a great plot for a Tom Clancy novel - the commander of a submarine is convinced by his superior officers that a new president is a Russian agent transporting critical secrets to the enemy on Air Force One and must be shot down before he escapes U.S. airspace...

This assumes of course that the U.S. has developed a surface to air missile capable of downing a jet at altitude - which to my knowledge does not exist. The closest thing to that is a system developed to shoot down anti-submarine warfare helicopters by the German navy but not actually implemented.

As such that brings into question what type of missile is in the Q drop and what really was the target...