If RF truly is a risk then perhaps we should investigate shielding the electronics more than they are now.

Also - ground based RF projectors could easily cause problems and would be easier to use than smuggling things on the planes. After all - a plane is most vulnerable when it's closest to the ground.

You can never be 100% safe from anything. Is there a risk that EMI could take down a plane? Possibly. There is also a risk from unscreened cargo, terrorists with plastic explosive shoved up their a$$, overseas maintenance contractors, bird strikes, satellites falling from orbit, suicidal pilots, metal fatigue, sunspot activity, windshear, lightning, .........

If I'm going to worry about anything on a trip, it will be my drive two/from the airport which has a much greater chance of killing me than any terrorist - pre or post 9/11.

You mean their box-cutters would have passed manual, magnetometer, and x-ray screening? I never realized that.

I can buy a WiFi sniffer for ten bucks. How much do you think it would cost to equip each airplane with a dozen wearable broadband alarms for the crew's use?

What ban?

"Adequate protection" has a numerator and a denominator. When the safety of many hundreds of people is involved, a certain magnitude of outlay is justifiable.

Absolutely.......







...hey, was that a jab? ;)

I'm pretty worried about schools, myself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boj...e_bombing_plot (Second paragraph.)

In essence, you've just described a large plot element of the 1990 film Die Hard 2: Die Harder.

This question is too easy: Worst-case terrorist scenario?

I will answer a harder one: Worst-case scenario period.

This is so obvious: Kip Hawley gets elected President.

Point taken.

Now look at the guy who was try to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.

Or the guy who got caught in Miami for downloading instructions on the internet for how to make a suicide-bomb vest.

----

I didn't say that all terrorist were stupid. I just said that most of them are.

Yeah, there are examples on both sides of the fence.

But I never count on the stupidity of my enemy for my safety. That's bad tactics, in my opinion.

Most terrorists are really nothing special and generally not your smartest kids on the block. Below average, generally. There are exceptions but they are the exceptions.

If someone thinks that the scenario mentioned here is a "worst-case terrorist scenario", then we have simultaneous examples of paranoia gone wild and a huge blindspot to so many situations with far worse expected outcomes.

"Carry on kids. Come back after you read the next comic book."

Sometimes assuming that lots of them are stupid is actually a good thing. I think having a realistic assessment of your enemy is the most important part of going into battle.

True, but the operators in the field don't need the strategic overview of the planners, just the tactical smarts to pull it off. Sometimes you need lots of smarts to pull off a mission (9/11 - both planners and operators) and sometimes you don't (trigger a suicide vest).

You lost me. In what way is "assuming" anything about your enemy "a realistic assessment"? If I had to assume anything, I'd want to think they were at least as smart as I. The consequences of being wrong about that are much more desirable than being wrong about thinking they're stupid.

First of all, based on the way you asked the question, it was my assumption that you had no real knowledge of electronics instrumentation or EMI issues - few people do. Secondly, the design of electronic instrumentation has changed just a little bit since 1960. There is no accepted scientific evidence that EMI has ever adversely affected in-flight instrumentation - you said it yourself, the "evidence" is anecdotal. Finally, I don't have hard data, but my training and recent experience with EMI issues allows me to conclude there is no practical worst case scenario for an RF generator to adequately interfere enough to cause an in-flight disaster. Your argument is similar to those who fear the liquid bomb scenario: while it may be theoretically possible, it is in no way practical. Assuming that RF at some level could interfere with instrumentation, I seriously doubt that the form factor for such a generator could be carried on and powered up.

Do you understand the concept of expected outcomes and risk management?

People that don't understand those simple concepts make for very poor architects of scenarios and even worse scenario players.

There's a context to this:

"Carry on kids. Come back after you read the next comic book."

This is the correct context: "THIRD PRINCIPLE: Do Not Underestimate. He who lacks foresight and underestimates his enemy will surely be captured by him." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

How can you assess anything unknown without making assumptions?

This might cause you to think that they're pursuing high-level activities that they're not. And you'd miss the low-level activities they've been pursuing the whole time you were looking for the high-level ones.

magiciansampras, come on. The comic books say it's possible. :D

No, that's not the correct context.

Also, isn't the paranoia here about being killed not about being captured. ;)

This, from the same poster who gave us "There are exceptions but they are the exceptions."

I think they should stick to the important things like bottles of water and eau-de-cologne - that's where the real danger lies.

Don't allow? That is totally unworkable. Besides the roads that loop around almost all our airports, there are parking garages which have line of sight to antennas, and public roads off airport property which could be used as bases to jam the receivers onboard.

Sorry, but a reactionary 'just ban everything' approach to security is neither workable, nor prudent.

Risk management is key....anyway, why get so bent over this scenario while cargo remains unscreened and through-the-fence employees are not screened, nor are their facilities really sterile.

We have bigger fish to fry than chase pie in the sky scenarios.

A lot gets thru. Wouldn't surprise me to see a box cutter get thru. People get pocket knives thru all the time.

Maybe. But those also emit RF which runs contrary to the very thing you're trying to protect against. Can't have it both ways.

The one you seemed to advocate.

But you also have to look at the big picture and look at it statistically. Statistically speaking, you're looking at a nonthreat. I don't think you could really justify it as it would cost significantly more to protect against the "threat" then the damage that would be caused if the threat were realized.

If the shoe fits ... ;)

Stand corrected.

I disagree. The vowed intent of the jihadists is to eradicate Israel. The US is a target because we support Israel and muck in the politics of the Middle East (and elsewhere in the world).

America is not the only target of jihadists. I don't think terrorists necessarily care who they kill, just as long as they can cause a lot of terror with a little bit of resources. If they hit Americans, so much the better.

You shouldn't overestimate either.

It's not that hard to grasp what those words mean. Do I need to spell it out for you?

Come on, the comic books say it's possible. So this must be the biggest fish in the sea to catch. :D

I've thought of several ways to create mayhem but I'm not going to give people ideas. I hate it when they do it to planes. They should double the penalty for terrorist attacks against planes and airports.....kill them 2 times over.

I can think of more frightening scenarios than that.

With all the problems surrounding electronics on planes, I would like to think that many of the issues you have, have been discussed during aircraft design.

So can I - without even working at it. But this one is fairly cheap to enforce.

I would like to think so, too. But aircraft engineers of every stripe - airframe, powerplant, and avionics - have that old weight constraint line in their linear models. They do everything they know how to about imaginable scenarios (including lightning), but my guess would be that extraordinary amounts of RF noise directed at electronics are outside of their box - and weight limit. Cf. the architectural engineers who designed the Twin Towers.

:D And level all the hotels off the approach end of a runway. ^

A favorite text of beginning martial arts students.

A pity he failed to anticipate copyright laws. :p

This is the kind of thinking that the NTSB typically highlights as an early link in an accident chain.

The glideslope transmitter is 1,000 feet down the runway from the threshold, and the localizer transmitter is at its far end. Equipment powerful enough to disrupt the ILS at that range wouldn't even fit in a hotel room, much less be carried there in a suitcase. Anyway, waiting for instrument conditions that would make the landing phase vulnerable could be very tedious - and many airports never have Cat II, much less Cat III weather.

But if a laptop-sized RF broadband noise generator were located a few feet from a critical harness of aircraft wiring, who knows what havoc could be wrought?

Alright mister, it's game on now.......



......as soon as I can think of something witty to say.

;)

At the risk of being too political and bustin' an Omni-cap in you ;) -

What imperialist agenda did Afghanistan, Somalia and the Sudan have? What's their relation to Israel? Because they've been there fighting for some time now.....

I think excuses are all that's needed, myself. And their avowed things the US can do to "make it all stop" doesn't stop at leaving Saudi Arabia (done), leave Iraq (not yet) and stop supporting Israel (not ever, probably). The list of what we need to do it much, much larger.

The list is rather finite, both in scope and depth. Admitting that there'd be a huge drop in the number of persons engaged in "global terrorism" if political adjustments of a sort were made is politically inconvenient quite often; it doesn't change the fact that it would be effective as it has proven to be in a great number of contexts. Eliminate entirely? Terrorism is a tactic, so waiting for it to disappear entirely is like waiting to see a fairy godmother wave a wand to make a pumpkin into a carriage.

I agree that it's much larger. Personally, I think Afghanistan was justified because the Taliban WERE harboring Osama. As he claimed responsibility, we couldn't just let that go. Sudan shouldn't just be our problem, and Somalia I really don't think we needed to be involved there as it's still a mess there too.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is centuries old and that's going to take a long time to resolve, if it ever is. Honestly, I think we should largely butt out of a lot of world politics and spend our money at home. The mess we have right now with wars and so on is starting to cause an economic downturn. And maybe if we start focusing more on things at home, things will start to settle down elsewhere.

I don't think America's imperialist, but I do think it's a bit too nosy. And that nosiness with even good intentions can and has gotten us into trouble.

I don't believe terrorists will settle for a theoretical possibility. They not only want to make absolutely sure that their acts of destruction are successfully carried out, but they also want the terror that comes from the use of explosives. They want the visibility that comes from a punch to the nose as opposed to the anonymity that comes from poisoning a drink. Being able to take credit is just as important as the deed itself. Otherwise, a government investigation could easily conclude that an airplane was downed due to a mechanical/electrical failure (and, if you really want to get carried away with this and jump into the conspiratorial aspects: the government could use this to mask terrorism by blaming it on mechanical/electrical failure). Either way, terrorists want us to know that they did this. A bomb does that. A gun pointed in someone's face does that. A plane flown deliberately into a building does that. A mysterious crash does not.