Regarding the 'heaviest defended airspace' claim. Has anyone here ever brought up Matthias Rust?

[RZM]

If you're not familiar with the story, in 1987 Matthias Rust was a 19 year old amateur pilot from West Germany who thought it would be funny to fly without permission into the Soviet Union in his single engine Cessna.

He took off from Finland on the morning of May 28 and told air traffic he was going to Sweden. He then turned off his communications equipment and instead flew into the Soviet Union. He made it all the way to Moscow and landed near Red Square that evening. He was promptly arrested afterwards.

That some practical joker was able to violate Soviet airspace and land in the center of Moscow was quite an embarrassment to the Soviet air defense network and the military at large.

Obviously the Soviet air defense network and communications were lackluster and inferior to those in the US in 2001. But still, given that the Soviets failed to shoot down an intruding aircraft that was creeping towards the capital for hours (they did detect it), is it that surprising that the 9/11 planes, which were filled with civilian passengers BTW, weren't shot down either? This of course doesn't prove anything and it can be debated how applicable it is. Just thought I'd mention it in case it hasn't been mentioned here before.

Here's the wikipedia article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Rust