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The article says it clearly..."give me an hour"...

That bothered me. Why would it take 30 minutes longer to put AMRAAMs on than Sidewinders?

"Weekend Warriors", my friend...God love 'em, but nothiing replaces the 24/7 active duty military personnel.

>>The article says it clearly..."give me an hour"...

That bothered me. Why would it take 30 minutes longer to put AMRAAMs on than Sidewinders?<<

I am sure there are USAF weapons-loaders out there than can answer this, but. . .
AMRAAMs, like all live weapons, are stored in the weapons dump. It takes time to load a weapon on a truck and transport it to the flight line. You do not race with live ammo, especially with a sensitive weapon systems like the AMRAAM, as their internal guidance systems and radar components would be jarred out of whack. (Hi-G flight doesn't bother them because G's are not like dropping and bouncing). In addition, once you up-load the AMRAAM you have to conduct system checks to make sure the darned thing is loaded right and will function. You don’t want an AMRAAM firing off and in dogfight mode, flying for miles and miles and miles (a heck of a lot more miles than an AIM-9), just looking for any target because it’s internal systems were messed up and are not responding to radar feeds from the launch aircraft.

AIM-9's are less complicated and less heavy and easier to move around, load, and system check. They also have a much shorter range.

The fact that the USAF was willing to load live weapons and start CAP's without going through the usual dick-dance approval process says a lot about individual initiative.

Imagine the confusion, the "we don't know exactly what is going on" environment, and yet, the USAF was working hard and fast to respond WITHOUT the usual paperwork approvals and ponderous executive decisions. Just try and get any state or federal bureaucrat (FBI, for example) to do something out of regs--won't happen.

Our nation was under attack and the services responded wonderfully, demonstrating courage to act as necessary.