law dawg

Knock yourself out, but no one will listen. They never do. They all think they'll be instant Rambos come another 9/11. I guess I wasted almost two decades of my time in training. I should have just woke up one day and said, "Yep, I'm a badass."

TierFlyer

F that. I'm starting a LawDawg fanclub.

Gargoyle

LawDawg, there is a lot of truth in what you say. The problem is that there is very little which the TSA, in its current format, is doing which would actually prevent such a skilled team of terrorists. They cause great hassle to pax, and great financial burden to the airline industry, but a team like you describe will have little trouble getting past while the TSA is busy looking at shoes and 3 oz water bottles.

And that ignores the modus operandi of al Qaeda operations in the West. They want the big impact. Another hijacking post 9/11 won't give them that (unless they hijack 20 planes at once). Instead they'll go for a soft target with much greater effect. For example, it is no secret how easy it would be for them to blow up a stolen freighter in a major port. Read The Outlaw Sea. That would dwarf 9/11 and can be pulled off by a small team with minimal funding. Or look at all the unscreened cargo on commercial airlines. We are focusing huge resources on an inefficient and quite likely uneffective attempt to "fight the last war" while ignoring warnings of the next one.

hiltonhead

Well....sort of brought this thread to a screeching halt, didn't you? Seems that all the "instant heroes" suddenly found something else to do. Good post.

Doppy

Another FAM famously said that he has no doubt that with a smart, well trained team he could get the weapons of two FAMs on a flight. Since both of you seem to agree about AQ's superior capabilities, are armed FAMs a danger to aviation security? Or would you say that this will "never happen"?

Also, if the AQ team is as crack as you expect, won't they spot the FAMs and take their mission to a non-FAM flight anyway?

Gargoyle

Yeah, I guess most of them have a life on Saturday night, not like us.

hiltonhead

Most likely, but I'm sure a few are just trying to figure out how to word their reply so as to make a graceful exit. Law dawg's post was dead on. Too many times people have voiced their opinion that passengers will prevent another 911 type scenerio. Having seen that the majority of 1st class passengers are older, overweight, balding, intoxicated businessmen that do not even realize that they have dribbled salad dressing and scotch on their shirt and have difficulty finding seat 1A when spotted the seat number on the overhead, I'm not too confident in this belief. Now if we were talking about the passengers on SWA, I might tend to agree. A plane full of working stiffs that spent their tax refund on $39.00 plane tickets to take the kids to Disney will not tolerate a group of terrorists trying to ruin momma's vacation. On 911, passengers on flt 93 were made aware of what was happening by cell phone, had time to get together and make a plan, but sadly, still failed. In a real terrorist attack, there will be little, if any, time to react. The average passenger will still not know what is happening until it is over. At least the FAMS provide a slight, ever so slight, chance for survival. If a FAM can take down just 1 or 2 hijackers before they initiate their entire plan, then just maybe everyone else will have a chance. Hopefully they get the guy that was supposed to fly the plane. Maybe not. But my money stays with the trained professionals, not the drunken CEO's and rich blue-hairs.

law dawg

Gargoyle,

Thank you for the discussion. I like exchanges of ideas so long as ad hominems are absent.

Of course TSA impacts the actions of such a team. Layering security is the name of the game. If I had such a team I now have to clear the hurdle of having any weapons we would like to use be discovered, which would put the system on alert. Anyone who follows al Qaeda knows they generally launch attacks in waves or multiples, much like 9/11. A team getting popped at security would alert the entire system and jeopardize the mission across the board.

To ensure a more successful penetration of security I'd have my teams utilize implements that are acceptable across TSA. This isn't hard to discover as the USA media covers such items relentlessly. My teams can find plenty of weapon-like items that TSA allows on their very website, made public for all to see in keeping with the open nature of the US society.

But implemented weapons are, by nature, inferior to actual weapons. A broken wine bottle isn't as efficient as a knife.

I vehemently disagree that another 9/11 would not cause a "big impact." It would be bigger than 9/11, because everyone would wonder "how did it happen again, after all this security?"

I would posit, as well my friend, that you are not considering the strategic goals of al Qaeda. The mission could be a complete failure and they could still achieve strategic success - causing terror. Look at what happened after the London bombing plot - lots of canceled flights. And that is with a plot caught before it even made it to the airport. Imagine what would happen in they'd made it on the flight and failed. Or worse, made it on the flight and succeeded.

I would further posit that blowing up a dock and a boat does not cause as much terror as a civilian plane. Or cause as much economic impact, but this is just my opinion on the matter.

Take a look at this, and notice all the attempts, many of which happened within months of UNsuccessful attempts. If they come back to it after horrific failures, what makes anyone think they'll not come back to it after their most incredible success?

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

law dawg

Good questions. I'd say that al Qaeda teams are well trained but not as trained in CQC and tactics as FAMs are. FAMs train in scenarios shooting each other. Some will play bad guys and others will play the FAMs. They put their tactics in the crucible of the laboratory and see what works and what doesn't.

As far as spotting the FAMs, I would imagine such a scenario is the exact reason many of them have been on the news in the past few years saying some things need to change.

Gargoyle

It cost a lot more than lots of cancelled flights- I recall a figure of $80 million in lost airline business in the initial weeks. It also cost incredible amount of time and hassle for the water screening. However, much of that cost is not due to the competence of the threat team, but to the incompetence of the TSA, panicking and needing to show that they are "doing something". Water bottles are not a credible threat. The TSA was unprepared, and replied with a response which magnified the problem

1. Texas City, Texas, Apr. 16, 1947. A ship blew up in the port on Galveston Bay. The blast took nearly 600 lives and millions of dollars in property. Over 5000 were injured, 500 homes destroyed. Reports say pedestrians 10 miles away were knocked down by the blast. It had 7,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The initial explosion set off several nearby chemical plants. (note that lots of ports have fuel depots, etc, within range).

2. Port Chicago, California, July 17 1944. Ammo ship exploded. 320 dead, 400 injured. The explosion was felt 500 miles away.

A petroleum tanker, even one which is relatively empty but will the tanks still coated with fuel, could take out a significant bite of a city. Note that neither of those locations was anywhere near as densely populated as many of our current port cities.

Look at how unprepared DHS was for Katrina*, and how unprepared Pennsylvania was last week for the jam on the turnpike (which took a couple days to clear). This could take out a quarter of a city, and the confusion and incompetence which would follow would magnify the problem.

*while the cause of Katrina was natual, not terrorist, the physical devastation to an American city was the sort of thing which they were mandated to prepare for and deal with. The difference is that with Katrina they had three days warning.

law dawg

The "natural" part is a big deal. Why do you have PTSD after shootings but not after hurricanes? Dead is dead, after all. But the human brain puts a greater emphasis on harm coming *from another person* than from environmental factors. It is simply part of the human condition.

Now, if another boat blew up and killed a lot of people and it was terrorism related, would it impact the economy? Sure. Would it cause terror? Sure. But the question is would it do as much as aviation? I say no. There is a reason terrorists keep coming back to civilian aviation time and time again and do not target docks. Maybe because everyone flies and few boat? Most every day someone you know is on a plane, maybe that's it. I don't know, but there is a reason.

skylady

What has been proven in this case, is the flight crews can and will do whatever it takes to bring down the bad guys. True, we love the help of pax and FAMs, but this crew did not rely on either to stop this threat.^

TierFlyer

I call that the "cricket chirping" syndrome.
Hey, were you in first on that flight too?

Sorry, strongly disagree. Did the Greeks fail at Thermoply? The Texans at the Alamo? Pickett at Gettysburg? The ANZAC at Gallipoli? The Poms at Dunkirk? Sometimes your guys get put in a situation where they *will* lose a battle to win the war.

hiltonhead

I believe the topic of the thread was if untrained passengers should be counted on to save a plane from hijackers. In this case, yes, I do consider flt 93 a failure. Everyone perished. Americans are not big on martyrdom. A closer look at many of the above battles will show that history distorted a few of the facts (the victors write it, but the losers have to justify their loss) and most of it was glamourized to show that the losers didn't die in vain. Most did not know they were in a no-win situation until the end, and if given a choice, would have opted to take sick leave on that day. Most of the CEO's in 1st class will not go along with this plan. If the goal is to make a statement of defiance to the hijackers and destroy the plane, then we can forget any plan of resisting and just have ATC detonate an explosive under the wings once they realize a hijacking has taken place. That will show the hijackers. The idea situation is to neutralize the hijackers and safely land the plane with no passengers harmed. I'll save the martyrdom for Goth rock stars and homicide bombers.

law dawg

With all due respect ma'am, I disagree. And how.

LONG post ahead

Let's put this in perspective -

I assume you drive. I will further assume you drive well. Now, lets say some idiot is driving like, well, an idiot on the highway and you get around him and in front of him and get out of the way because you feel like he might cause a wreck. I'd say, "Well done! Bravo! You avoided that situation perfectly!" But I'd also mentally note that this yahoo was just some idiot.

Contrast that to this scenario-

You have to race Jeff Gordon (one of the best NASCAR racers in the world). Its a race to the finish line. It will be at speeds the likes of which you have never, ever seen. He drives them all the time. He has practiced for this very race many, many times before. You have not. He has raced in the kind of car you both will be driving, you have not. He has also raced on the track you'll be racing on. All you've done is drive on the street.

Oh, and he has a team of friends he has trained with incessantly to win this specific type of race. Your team is a bunch of people you may have never even met or spoken to before in your life, or maybe you have. But you've never trained in racing with them, just in, say, building houses.

Who you gonna bet on?

Oh, and just to sweeten the pot, if you lose the race, you'll die.

Now, knowing all that, how many people, when the starting light goes off, will just shut down from the adrenaline dump that will happen? If you look at the statistics, it will be over of 80%. How many people can go from reading their paper and drinking their latte to killing someone in a matter of seconds? The terrorists can. And that's what you'll have to do. And like I said before, you'll have to do it alone. Or at least train to do it alone, because you can't count on anyone else helping out. Hopefully you won't be like Will Ferrell in Old School, streaking by yourself.

I'm going to sign off with one final observation - special operation teams across the world are successful with much smaller teams than what they go up against all the time. They are successful due to a few factors - be training, better physical tools and better teamwork. Given time, coordination and leadership a less trained, less cohesive and less well-armed larger group can and will overwhelm them, but those elements must be present.

Time, coordination, leadership.

Now, if you were a bad guy, would you let them have it? Didn't think so.

Fight back, with all you have. Fight to the death. But also understand the realities of the situation. As a flight crew in a real violent hijacking you will be the first targeted. Did you read my first post? Where I said that if I was a terrorist I'd kill some people from the get-go? Guess who I was talking about. Offing people in authority positions tends to get the attention of the entire class. You'll be behind the curve, playing ketchup, because the bad guys have a plan and they're executing it on their timetable. You are going to have get the OODA loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop) going and go to work.

So, get to training. And good luck.