Apparently, the pilots were off the air ( not responding to any tower ) for well over an hour while covering at least 600 miles.
Why F 16 were not scrambled is interesting ?
They fell asleep, all veteran pilots know that’s exactly what happened.
The ADC was alerted and they had birds set to scramble.
Wonder what kind of wake up call a stream of 20 mike mike blowing past the windscreen would make?