Jets were scrambled to shoot down Flight 93: USNORTHCOM chief

C-Span aired a speech Wednesday by General Victor Renuart, USNORTHCOM chief. He said the following:

"Today we have created the apparatus that could allow us to engage one of those targets and, similar to, on 9-11, if we identify them soon enough and we know that they are a threat or we can determine they are a threat we have the aparatus that allows us to potentially shoot those aircraft down before they would have the effect of creating mass casualties as we saw in some other locations. In fact on 9-11 we were attempting to do that when flight 93 hit the ground in Pennsylvania as the result of some heroic efforts by the individuals on board, but we had launched airplanes, and we were chasing that aircraft down."

This quote indicates that the intent was to shoot the plane down, not just intercept it.

Renuart says the abiilty to intercept aircraft has been improved since 9-11.

Search "victor" or other key word on the C-SPAN site to pull up the video.