MacLeanBarrier

Not true at all. The U.S. Air Force only requires EIGHT HOURS of ANNUAL TRAINING for non-combat / non-law enforcement nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) maintenance people to use pump-action shotguns that have safeties and "action-release" buttons. Also loading a pump-action shotgun requires training.

Every ICBM has a pump-action shotgun inside its launch facility in the case of a breach.

Every ICBM has a secondary barrier system called a "B-Plug."

A pump-action shotgun is significantly more rudimentary than a non-safety/hammerless/double-action revolver.

A pilot cannot leave the cockpit (flight deck) to engage a threat. A firearm should only be used by a pilot during the process of trying to emergency land and only if an attacker has almost opened the cockpit door.

It does not very much training to point a revolver at an attacker only inches away from you. I've NEVER seen a law enforcement trainee miss at the two-yard line on a firearms training range.

With regards to the need for cockpit barriers: you're conflating bomb and gun threats with a solo weaponless suicidal cockpit attack.

People need to stop believing that a 35-inch galley cart on wheels (not all aircraft have them) and a flight attendant can stop a gym-hardened suicidal dive on Phencyclidine (P.C.P.).

People should not forget about the passenger on P.C.P. who was arrested on a September 13, 2006 flight (LAX to IAD) after numerous passengers could not restrain him.

It's like holding a wheelchair in front of you to stop a bull.

kyanar

Except that they commissioned no such studies. The RTCA document merely says that secondary barriers are the optimal solution, while improvised barriers are adequate but not fool proof, and no barrier with a human obstructing are not good but better than nothing. And further details that the problem with existing procedures is mostly lack of training and inconsistent implementation of existing procedure anyway.

The reality is, attempted hijackings since 9/11 with the current security are rare. So rare in fact that given the choice between spending money retrofitting every jetliner (I'm assuming they weren't going to mandate upgrades to ER turboprops!) fails the cost/benefit analysis - which the FAA has already done - given improvised barrier solutions provide an "adequate but not fool proof" protection against an event that happens less than twice a decade with thousands of planes in the air every second. That's a less than 0.0000001% hijacking rate by the way, you're more likely to get carjacked in Los Angeles.

The point remains that your solution has no problem to solve.

EDIT: I note the University study does directly address the installed barrier topic. So I'll speak to that for a bit.

The UNSW study also has several failings, including that it specifically speaks only about the topic of installed barriers, Federal Flight Deck Officers, and Federal Air Marshals, without looking at anything else - which means any conclusion of "secondary barriers are needed" must be within the context of the study scope basically being designed to ensure that was the outcome. I mean, if the three options are "armed human on flight deck", "armed human sitting randomly on the aircraft" and "stick up some metal wires across the forward galley", it's unsurprising that a cost benefit analysis will conclude that wires across the forward galley are most cost effective.

However, your conclusion that secondary barriers are "required" is contradicted by the very study you yourself linked, which actually directly contradicts your much vaunted RTCA study!

This passage seems to be saying that 9/11 wasn't a result of highly organised, highly athletic, dedicated terrorists, but rather a bunch of near incompetent idiots that by blind chance managed to get circumstances to line up so well that they actually succeeded - the failure of flight UA93 seems to lend some credibility to that interpretation of events.

Hang on, you've been trying to tell us for weeks that this is some super urgent risk, and now you're using a study as a reference that actually says "yeah, nah, that's unlikely"? Everything you've said has been about this 26 feet, 5 second figure. And this new study debunks that on page seven.

Right, so basically this part of the new study says hijacking a plane is pointless, because it'll get shot down before it gets anywhere. In fact a recent case where an airliner lost radio communications and suddenly found itself being "escorted" by armed military aircraft prepared to launch missiles at it if it deviated even slightly from its flight path show that the people on board don't even need to communicate with the outside world, simply failing to communicate will trigger a response.

This study erroneously conflates a human blocking the galley with a human blocking the galley with a secondary obstruction (galley cart) and treats them as the same test scenario - which they are not. A human on their own produces unsatisfactory results, however the human with a cart was merely deemed "not foolproof".

MacLeanBarrier

With all due respect, you are also conflating an elaborate bomb plot conspiracy or a team of multiple firearm-totting hijackers--which both are exceptionally hard to execute--with a weaponless solo suicidal cockpit (flight deck) attack when the door opens throughout the flight.

I was in the U.S. Air Force and have very close family members in the Air Force. It is an urban myth that fighter jets patrol the most or all of the skies armed with weapons. By the time it takes to deploy a crew to load up a fighter jet with dangerous ordinance, find and deploy a pilot, and get it up and to an airliner with a pilot-trained hijacker--that jet will have reached an urban target.

The U.S. Intelligence Community has considerable safeguards against terrorists training--or trying to get training--to fly commercial passenger aircraft.

Aside from your conflation regarding a steered attack, furthermore, regardless: A solo dive on the cockpit will not be by someone who is trained to steer a jet to a target--his goal is to simply wrench the controls and quickly put it into a lethal dive.

WillCAD

Every airman in the USAF also goes through a minimum eight-week basic training course, which includes, I believe, a full week of weapons training, in addition to the eight annual hours of training you mention.

And I don't care what the Air Force does - I do not want an improperly or inadequately trained flight attendant or pilot to be armed on board an aircraft in flight, no matter how rudimentary or complex the firearm may be. I want them to be properly trained in when to shoot, when not to shoot, and how to shoot, before they are entrusted with the lives of hundreds of passengers.

Also, don’t ICBM sites all have real, actual Air Police or other armed combat troops protecting the perimeter? The shotgun you mention is the last of a long line of physical barriers and armed personnel between the lone wolf Bad Guy and the silo control room, so that’s kind of a non-sequitur.

Marksmanship is only a small part of the picture, as you know (or should know.) Trigger discipline, i.e. knowing when and how to shoot so you don't squeeze off a round into a bystander or the bulkhead or your own foot before the weapon is actually pointed at the target, is a vital skill for anyone who is expected to use a firearm in a defensive or combat situation. Have you ever seen an accidental, premature, or improperly directed discharge in all of your years of experience? I’m sure you have – and they usually happen way before a shooter actually lines up the sights of his weapon with the target.

I'm not conflating those attack vectors.

YOU have conflated an irrational person in a drug-induced altered state who attempted to open a cabin door in flight (impossible and no real threat due to cabin press), with a deliberate attack by a hostile actor storming the flight deck. Bad example, straw-man argument.

You've also specifically (and repeatedly) mentioned single-actor weaponless suicide attempts to storm the flight deck as the justification for your barrier system. But you have ignored the fact that the scenario you posited puts not one, not two, but a minimum of THREE flight crew in the path of the hostile - the pilot who is actually in the doorway on the way to or from the lav, the flight attendant standing with a galley trolley as an active barrier, and the pilot on duty inside the flight deck. On larger aircraft, there may be additional flight crew in close proximity, such as FAs in the forward galley, or more flight deck crew inside the flight deck itself.

Your hypothetical PCP-addled supervillain would have to run up the narrow aisle without being tripped (accidentally or deliberately) by other passengers, shoulder at least two people plus the galley trolley out of his way just to get to the flight deck door, shove his way inside while the standing pilot and FA are trying to restrain him, and after that he'd still have to overpower the pilot inside the flight deck, throw that pilot out of the flight deck, and lock the door from the inside, before he'd have control of the aircraft – and do it all, as you said, unarmed and alone. Meanwhile, the rest of the flight crew and any nearby passengers would be converging on him in a panicked lynch mob out to paint the cabin with his blood.

The string of luck necessary for such an attack to be successful is so unlikely as to be unworthy of any serious consideration.

Multiple well prepared, non-drugged hostile actors with a detailed plan and multiple contingency points, on the other hand, pose a far more serious threat to the flight deck, and your barrier system would not decrease their odds of success at all, since they would have built it into their plan from the beginning. I have no doubt that your barrier is a good one. I have no doubt that it is an improvement over the current system of FA and galley trolley. But it is folly to expend significant time, energy, and money to marginally improve existing measures that are already adequate to the laughably unlikely threat, when that time, energy, and money are desperately needed to improve other measures that are currently woefully inadequate to counter far more pressing threats.

Reverse the swing of flight deck doors so they only open outward, and this problem goes bye-bye faster than a free drink coupon in Business Select. Additional expensive barriers, while they would be more secure and more effective than the current system, are simply not needed. It’s like buying meteorite insurance – it’s not impossible to be hit by one, but the odds are so great against it that you’re just wasting money that would be better spent on flood insurance or short-term disability.

People also need to stop believing that every suicidal fanatic terrorist is a Schwarzenegger-MENSA-Navy Seal hybrid. We're not dealing with Cobra or SMERSH or VENOM or KAOS or SPECTRE or Doctor Claw. There are certainly clever terrorists, but the clever ones are usually clever enough to stay home safe, while the stupid ones are generally those who go on suicide missions.

MacLeanBarrier

Per what you "believe"--it's not true. One day on an M4 carbine.

Your conclusions about revolver training and accuracy contradict your assertions of the other two threats that you conflate. A pilot cannot go "Passenger 57" outside of the cockpit (flight deck)

Not true at all. Their security is automated and remote. There are no armed Air Force Security Forces teams pacing the 440 remote nuclear ICBM sites 24/7. No such thing as "the silo control room."

With all due respect, you just did.

The statistics prove a Lone Wolf will strike soon again with weaponless and easy inexpensive means: 15 solo vehicle-ramming attacks in Europe and the U.S. in the last 17 months. Here are the facts you are not paying attention to and avoid making relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack

To rent a commercial sized truck you need a drivers license, a credit card, and a means of travel to justify to local police officers; avoid being pulled over by military/law enforcement and get through armed checkpoints with no cargo manifest and/or cargo with no knowledge of your purpose--I know this because I worked on the busiest U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints for six years. I almost always knew if a smuggler has contraband due to their uncontrollable verbal and physical behavior.

Most of the vehicle-ramming killers all had firearms or fake ones to assure death-by-cop and avoid life in solitary confinement.

I routinely arrested illegal aliens being smuggled and their coyotes smuggling them through airports:


To get on a jet you just need a non-drivers license identification card--that you got from someone who looks like you (imposter)--and cash for a boarding pass. No weapon, no cargo, no story needed. The weaponless gym-rat attacker on P.C.P. just waits for the flight attendant to alert him soon before the cockpit door unlocks--preferably one that opens inward--so that the pilot cannot see the attack (26 feet) in time to react.

kyanar

For a start, the statistics prove no such thing apart from the fact that you are are exceptionally effective at constructing strawmen. Last I checked, a van was not a jetliner, and to conflate the two requires some serious mental gymnastics - a level of mental athleticism equivalent to the level of physical athleticism your lone wolf boogeymen demonstrate.

What's that got to do with the chance of someone deciding to dive a jetliner? Nothing.

(Also, FYI, small commercial trucks require precisely none of the things you've claimed. Hertz or Europcar will happily rent you one - just present a driver's license issued anywhere in the world! And given some driver's licenses are laminated cardboard, that's about as secure as asking someone to write their name on a scrap of tissue).

For a start, gym-rat attackers would not be capable of your claim, since that level of strength training is always at the expense of athleticism and endurance - muscle is heavy. Generally if someone can move fast, they won't be that strong. And if they're strong, they won't move fast - no matter what drugs they're on.

Second, your own references point out that the likelihood of your claim is close to zero - it actually says outright (in 4.1.1) "If they successfully made it into the flight deck, the hijackers could still crash the plane of course, but if that were their goal, it could be accomplished with far simpler (if still difficult) methods such as smuggling a bomb aboard". Terrorists may be stupid, but they aren't mentally defective - they can work out that the chance of managing to storm the cockpit to crash a plane and kill ~300 people is pretty low, and they'd have more luck just smuggling a bomb on board or into the cargo hold (which, incidentally, is a structural weakness as well).

You wouldn't happen to have some Tiger repellant rocks would you?

Boggie Dog

I don't think any positions are going to change no matter how long this poor horse is beaten.

I don't think the threat is so great to justify the cost. My opinion, right or wrong, and I will still fly with no concern about a PCP crazed 26 foot distance sprinter breaching the cockpit door.

Out!

JamesBigglesworth

Absolutely irrelevant to the aircraft situation you are presenting.

Have you ever taken *any* course on statistics and formal logic?



Irrelevant, and the last sentence bears no relevance to anything at all.


No, you didn't. The quackery of behavioural detection is pure fantasy.



As irrelevant to unarmed attackers on aircraft as plots to introduce poison into the water supply.

(And any attacker that was interested in really killing people and causing terror would do that over hijacking a plane because it is the vector that would give the biggest terror bang for the buck in the US these days. 250ml of polonium 210 into the water supply feeding Las Vegas or Portland or <pickcityhere> and you'd have tens of thousands dead within weeks.)



You have a very active imagination, but equally poor understanding of risk analysis, and possibly a poor understanding of how people use drugs.

How many planes have been attacked in the last 15 years via the method you are scaremongering about? You've been asked repeatedly and have not given a single example. Exactly how many "gym-rat attacker[ers] on PCP" exist in your world?! I have to ask because my world hasn't seen a single one anywhere on a plane in 50+ years.

Personally, and I'd say this as a firearms user of 45+ years who has used them in combat situations, I'd also say your grasp on the probability of successful use of firearms in confined spaces by people under stress and duress and, on your account, without much//any training, is also highly dubious. That one is professionally embarrassing for you, IMO.

84fiero

/THREAD

MacLeanBarrier

This conversation has become circular--hate it or consider the idea. Thanks to all who provided input!

http://bit.ly/macleanbarrier

Boggie Dog

Not a matter of hate or consider. It's a question of need or don't need. The majority that have posted here don't see the need.

chollie

I don't see the need or the practicality, but I feel bad about saying that because I know the OP took a lot of time and thought to develop this.

OP, if you develop a device that allows TSA to scrutinize my genitals, butt crack and chest without me either being subjected to unhealthy radiation or being subjected to hands fondling and groping where they shouldn't, I will be 110% supportive, cost be damned.

Carl Johnson

Why do we need the OP's invention? Why can't one of the FA's just be trained as a retiarius?

MacLeanBarrier

"During his first week on the job after a Supreme Court victory, Mr. MacLean discovered and disclosed that key post-9/11 reforms have not been implemented – for instance, the creation of secondary barriers between the passengers and the cockpit, and the installment of cockpit doors that open in to the cabin, which reduces the risk of a terrorist attack."

https://www.whistleblower.org/press/...ity-breakdowns

cestmoi123

If you really care about passenger safety, you'd put any patents for this in the public domain. Otherwise, the reasonable assumption is that your professed concern about this problem is driven by a desire to profit.