Omega18 wrote:One other thing worth noting is that most airlines are confined to a max speed of .75 or .79 mach at most, including absolutely all the larger civillain ones. (The Concords are all out of service and a terrorist wouldn't be able to fly one even if they go access to it due to their condition at this point.
Again, that's a limitation of level flight. Most civilian passenger jets could break Mach 1 in a powered descent, and quite a few of the high-end business jets like Lears and Gulfstreams could as well. I'm not sure how well the machines would survive the experience but hey, if you intend to fly a suicide mission anyway, who the hell cares?
While a smaller business jet modified to carry chemical or biological weapons, or simply completely loaded with explosives might be a real threat, it wouldn't involve a hijacking attempt at this point.
Nope. With sufficient money you can just
buy such an aircraft.
Besides which, a fully fueled airplane of
any size is, essentially, "loaded with explosives". I'm not sure a cargo of C-4 would be appreciably worse than loading barrels of jet fuel into a cargo bay anyhow, and jet fuel is more readily available at an airport anyway - it attracts no suspicion for a jet operator to request a truckload.
Modifying a civillian plane to carry chemical or biological weapons takes considerable time, and even the incompetant TSA screeners should notice terrorists trying to literally load up the plane they are going into with explosives!
Couple points here:
First of all, the utility of any aircraft for delivering either chemical or biological agents is questionable. As far as I know, no one has ever done it (although if you do know of such an instance please speak up - I'd be interested). Crop dusters certainly
do spread chemicals - although they do it just a few feet off the ground with limited areas of impact. Which is why there are much more stringent rules for securing agricultural airplanes than there used to be - these are airplanes
designed to spread chemicals. But it's a lot different spraying 500 acres of cropland vs. downtown Manhattan, as an example. If you can't fit the airplane between the buildings at a low level - and that would be difficult between clearance requirements, street lights, etc. - then dispersing chemicals at a higher altitude is going to require a LOT more of the offending substance because the dispersal will be much, much greater. It will be much harder to get a lethal or "merely" harmful concentration at ground level.
Second, TSA screening does not exist at all airports. As it is, the TSA is finding it very difficult to adequately staff the 30-40 passenger hubs. It has nowhere near the resources to have on-duty staff at the 5,000+ designated landing areas in the US. Which is why the small-scale airports rely on the local pilots to keep an eye out for trouble and report it it directly to the authorities. Mostly, this has involved TV reporters setting out to prove how "easy" it is to do naughty stuff at small airport and ended up with said reporters in Federal custody, although some genuine criminal activity has been stopped by this. It's not "kewl", it's not high tech, it doesn't involve badges or other fancy shit but the small scale pilots know damn well that if something nasty DID start at their field they'd be shut down, the innocent with the guilty, so if they want to continue flying (and they do) there's a definite incentive to help out Homeland Security.
If its a plane the terrorists own being used, the reality is they are very unlikely to get intercepted before hitting their target period. They can simply file a flight plan that goes right over their target and continue toward it until they crash into their target, or unload their chemical or biological weaponry.
Actually, flight plans are not always required in the US.
Washington D.C. is one of the few areas with a large enough no fly area to intercept a plane before it reaches its target.
No, it's not.
They couldn't stop a Cessna 150 from nearly overflying the White House - and that's one of the smallest, slowest airplanes around. Of course, a C150 isn't much of a threat either. Instead of evacuating everyone to out of doors they should have herded them into a basement. I mean, I know guys who own
motorcycles heavier than a C150
I suppose if we just summarially executed anyone who entered the ADIZ without proper authorization, shot them down on the fringe of the urban areas to minimize damage, that could work, but there is still great reluctance to shoot down innocent civilians. And it's not just small airplanes - passenger jets have violated that no-fly zone, too. We're just not paranoid/threatened enough to start downing as an automatic first response.
Basically the areas with no fly zones still have fighter bases nearby to intercept if needed.
I don't think you realize just how many "no fly zones" have been put up since 9/11. They're in every state.
Just about the only case in which I can see a civilian jet with mach .9 capability actually needed to be intercepted without real advanced warning would be if it was stolen. However civillian jets with this capability are not that common and generally are reasonably well guarded simply due to their financial value and the fear of them getting stolen for that reason.
There's actually several thousand, at least, world-wide and since such jets can easily cross even the Pacific (with a couple refueling stops) there's not even a need to steal one in North America. If a group was determined to obtain such a jet they certainly could do so.
The terrorists not only have to steal it, they have to also bring in their large quantity of explosives and load it in the plane or take even longer to modify it to deploy chemical or biological weapons. This simply isn't that easy to do.
All they have to do is either load/modify the airplane outside the US, or take it to a private/secluded airstrip in the US to do this work. You could even build such a strip without too much difficulty in a remote area, and the US still has plenty of them - as does Canada and Mexico. If you fly in and out in the daytime in good weather you won't need elaborate lighting or landing systems.
Of course, the Feds know all this - which is why small airports get unscheduled visits, and they want to know that there's nothing shady going on inside hangars.
terrorists could probably do similar damage to what they can do with their relatively small civillian jet with a large truck carrying explosives, so this seems like an unlikely scenario.
I think this is an important point - truck bombs can do just as much damage, and it's far easier to load a Ryder rental truck with explosive and park it outside a Federal building as Jeffrey Dahmer did, than to obtain an airplane with sufficient capacity to deliver an equal amount of explosive AND a pilot willing to die for the cause. Because, unlike a truck, you can't just park an airplane on the road outside a building in a major city and simply walk away from it unnoticed.
And I do believe that's why we see a hell of a lot more car and truck bombs than airplane bombs. Cars and trucks - hell, idiots with backpacks - are much more efficient means of delivering destruction.
Basically what it comes down to is I just don't see that much of a need for the Pacific Northwest to have immediately available air cover at the moment. This makes me suspicious that many of the people behind this protest are worried about the loss of jobs from the airbase closure rather than real miltiary need.
It's hard to fault people who want to protect their livelihood. I mean, you can understand why they're motivated to use any argument they can find.
But, you know - an F-16 might not be the best interceptor for civilian aircraft. Those fighters were designed to fight other military hardware, not to intercept and control civilian traffic. I don't know - mounting guns on a Learjet might in fact make more sense, especially if a Lear costs less to operate and maintain, but can still do the job effectively. Using an F-whatever to intercept small civilian aircraft is a lot like using a tank to direct traffic.
