Hmmm. Should I or shouldn't I?

And that differs from ignorance in what way?

Could you disguise your device as a laptop or GameBoy and walk right onto a plane with it? Or build a timer into it and secrete it in a checked bag or cargo shipment?

Tell me what's unlikely (or very unlikely - or very highly unlikely) about disguising a source of high-power EMI so the people looking for explosives would overlook it?

Judging from the caliber of TSA people I've encountered, it's more than likely.

The FBI doesn't have a monopoly on the English langauge. Furthermore, the FBI seems to have problem with "terrorism" charges and so mostly does "terrorism-related" ones. It seems like they might have a few problems with their operational definition.

Why not? For a lot of people the worst-case terrorist scenario is being bombed by a foreign country with nuclear weapons that threatens to bomb them back into the stone age and basically wipe them off the face of the map. That's a rather terrifying prospect coming from a party that can do just that.

...but sometimes people just hand you their leg on a silver platter - and that's no fun. I think I'll wait a little longer.

As I'm a Yankee fan no way can I route for sox
Now back to topic...sorry mods.

Wow. You're truly a piece of work. I guess Robert Mueller (the Director, FBI) should get in touch with you to find out where his agents are screwing up.

Usually is "not always".

In the interest of innoculating one's self from criticism, a country engaging in self-dealing through word games and creative definitions is not a surprise and so they come up with definitions that downplay the notion of state terrorism as well.

Whoops! Sorry Coach!

<not really......>

No. Even using solid state electronics and the most efficient batteries that exist you cannot generate enough power to incapacitate the on-board avionics. Further, even if you did affect the avionics, there is no guarantee that the result would a) give you control of the airliner, or b) incapacitate the airliner.

Whether or not the TSA could detect it is not the issue.

The problem is that you can't get enough EMI power generated from a portable device with a battery power supply over a long enough period of time to get the results you're talking about. You can get a couple of moderately high power pulses, but generating high power levels requires large components, lots of energy, and lots of heat dissipation. AND you need to generate enough energy across a wide band of frequencies to jam everything on a plane. Total power required can be figured by doing an integral calculus across bandwidth and instantaneous power on a given frequency. You can't generate more energy than the batteries can provide.

Here are a couple of examples: On the river approach into DCA, from the north, you pass within relatively close proximity to several TV towers. A couple of those transmitters have effective radiated power in the megawatts at UHF frequencies. There are also several of the FM stations close by to the approach path - generating kilowatts of power each. Planes don't fall out of the sky there....

There are a number of other places in the world where aircraft regularly land adjacent to very high power transmitting stations, including the Meadowlands (NJ), near Newark and Teterboro, or planes landing at SFO and Oakland.

Now, it is possible to affect specific frequencies navigation electronics or communications electronics. But even if you affect certain frequencies, there are alternative frequencies available, and there are alternative landing locations that may not require the affected frequencies. And there are still some PAR approaches available around the country (PAR = ground controller issues left-right-descend instructions to the pilot via radio) that could be used if no other nav gear were working on the plane.

Now, I'm not saying it would be completely impossible to incapacitate an airliner, but the equipment required to do so would be large, bulky, and require more energy than can be carried on an airliner, even as cargo. Ergo, it is highly unlikely that you can cause a crash in that fashion. And even then, it would not be predictable.... predicitability being one thing that the terrorist community seems to value.

It would be far more practical for a terrorist or terrorist-wannabe to obtain and use a shoulder-fired rocket.

Not the ones running the show. A lot of them have advanced degrees in engineering disciplines and the sciences.

You've got a very restrictive set of assumptions. First: solid-state. Well, I think I'd use a spark gap. Very intense very broadband energy. Second: batteries. The AC outlets at the seats would work over as many charge-discharge cycles as it took.

Other than that, I agree that it would be possible to incapacitate an airliner from inside, because the field strength would be orders of magnitude greater than those reaching the airplane from nearby transmitters on the ground. Inverse square law.

Think what you're saying, too, though. There's no way terrorists would be able to plan such a large-scale plot, build the devices, deploy them and board a significant portion of them onto planes, without being caught up and detected at some point in the process.

Assuming there is a RF-based threat--which I'm dubious of, but for the sake of argument we'll assume is valid--there's still the problem of getting it onto enough planes to cause enough failures to make it worthwhile to terrorists. Our intelligence infrastructure may deserve some criticism, but I am fairly certain they would catch on to a plot which would require terrorists make 500 flights with RF devices to be effective. (And--making the reasonable assumption that such a device would be far short of 100% effective--surely pilots would start making reports of weird interference on the planes which weren't crashed--and thus would really tip off authorities to the potential problem).

It's just not a viable scenario.


I've had a small folding knife (3.5" blade) pass through security multiple times this year alone. (I had not realized it was in my laptop bag until after having gone through at least three TSA checkpoints with it--with not a single one even triggering a bag check!) A friend of mine had a much larger folding knife (a 6" blade) pass through several checkpoints as well in 2002.

So no, I don't have much faith the TSA, in their squinting at the x-rays to try to spot caps on bottles and the like, would catch box cutters very often, even today.


I mostly agree... although to play devil's advocate, I suspect a series of "unexplained" crashes would go a long way toward creating general panic and terror and thus might serve the terrorists' goals just the same.

Too busy haggling about toothpaste and deodorant to catch weapons.

If disabling planes was so readily possible for terrorists, wouldn't the DoD already know about it?