What is scary is, there were planes smashing into the WTC, crashing in fields, no planes were shot down even as they attacked the Pentagon. If someone launched a first strike against us, would we respond? Or would we wait to see if the smoke cleared.
I am personally quite concerned about our perimeter air defenses. I think we might be semi OK in response to any one threat, but, imagine a combined laydown - bombers, SLBMs, cruise missiles and ICBMs. Heck, even take away the ICBMs. Complicate things further by putting into play Russian and Chinese bombers (including possible TBD Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms they've be chatting with the Russians about) taking off from Venezuela and perhaps other points south. Could we deal with a saturation attack agaisnt CONUS?