The announcement officially makes Langley's F-22 squadrons combat ready.

"After years of collaborative effort, a key milestone for the F-22A has been reached," said General Corley. "The integrated 1st Fighter Wing and 192nd Fighter Wing team at Langley possess sufficient Raptors, equipment and trained Airmen to provide Air Dominance for the Joint Force for many years to come."

FOC for the F-22 means the aircraft are now ready for global engagement, said Lt. Col. Mark Hansen, Air Combat Command F-22 Integration Officer.

"Crews are now [fully] organized, trained, equipped and ready for the joint fight."

Since the F-22s reached Initial Operational Capability two years ago, the 1st Fighter Wing and the Air National Guard's 192nd Fighter Wing have dedicated time and resources into finding how to best use and maintain the world's most advanced fighter. The fighter has deployed and trained across the world to define and refine its capabilities and tactics.

The 1st FW has been training for the wartime mission since the F-22 went IOC, said Brig. Gen. Mark A. Barrett, 1st FW commander. Langley's Raptors were declared IOC in December 2005, making them capable of some combat operations such as homeland defense.

"We are available to be tasked at any time, to do whatever our nation requires," General Barrett said. The 1st and 192nd Fighter Wings will continue to baseline the F-22 so the rest of the Raptor fleet can learn from their experience, he added.

Even though Team Langley has reached the Raptor's FOC, they will continue training to get better every day, said Col. Jay Pearsall, 192nd FW commander.

"There's no change in training," he said. "Everybody is working hard, and we're ready to go to war, (on) deployments or on exercises."

NORAD Mission and Structure.

NORAD is a binational command established in 1958 between the United States and Canada

. Its mission was, and is, to defend the airspace of North America and protect the continent.

That mission does not distinguish between internal and external threats; but because NORAD was created to counter the Soviet threat, it came to define its job as defending against external attacks.

The threat of Soviet bombers diminished significantly as the Cold War ended, and the number of NORAD alert sites was reduced from its Cold War high of 26.

Some within the Pentagon argued in the 1990s that the alert sites should be eliminated entirely.

In an effort to preserve their mission, members of the air defense community advocated the importance of air sovereignty against emerging "asymmetric threats" to the United States: drug smuggling, "non-state and state-sponsored terrorists," and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology.

NORAD perceived the dominant threat to be from cruise missiles. Other threats were identified during the late 1990s, including terrorists' use of aircraft as weapons.

Exercises were conducted to counter this threat, but they were not based on actual intelligence.

In most instances, the main concern was the use of such aircraft to deliver weapons of mass destruction.

Flight 77: Some Eyewitness Accounts

"On a Metro train to National Airport, Allen Cleveland looked out the window to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. 'I thought, "There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,"' he said. Before he could process that thought, he saw 'a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics.'"
- "Our Plane Is Being Hijacked." Washington Post, 12 Sep 2001