A passenger airliner (Call it a Boeing 767 series) has been hijacked by Jihadists (or whatever the name of the day is), and is heading towards NYC. We get a call from a passenger on board about 15 minutes from the time the plane could hit the Empire State building. There are no air marshalls on board.
What do we do? We know that this is a possibility now, beyond any shred of a doubt. Do we have many options? I know that all sorts of odd technical solutions were mentioned in the days after 9/11, but short of hoping the passengers take down the terrorists, or having a fighter intercept and shoot down the airliner (which is not a great option, but better than nothing?), what can we do?
The way I see it:
Shooting down the plane (with SAMs):
Good: We can implement the solution now. (And have, to a degree, I believe.) We have SAM batteries sitting around, scaring our own jet-jocks; Why not deploy HAWK (if not Patriot) batteries, around all major cities? Can we not finally admit that no, the Taliban Airforce is not the threat it once was, and reallocate our AD assets to where they are needed?
Bad: Given the range and problems with identifying friend from foe (IFF), such a shootdown will almost invariably be among populated areas. Also, SAM batteries are not cheap, and who will pay for them? Would Army divisions simply lose a portion of their AD capability? Would SAM batteries fall under DHS?
Shooting down the plane (with Fighters):
Good: We have, I think it is safe to say, the finest Airforce in the world. The level of training is superb, the equipment is top-notch. A squadron of fighters could easily cover a rather large area, allowing assets to be concentrated, and costs lowered. Also, IFF problems could be lowered, since theoretically, the pilot could establish visual contact with the plane, and I assume could use binoculars to see into the cockpit, and confirm what is going on.
Bad: EXPENSIVE. Our fighters are high-performance beasts, and as such, gulp fuel and spares at amazing levels. Keeping a permanent air presence over or near a large city would probably involve a suprisingly large amount of aircraft (to allow for proper maintenance), and would eat up LOTS of fuel. I don’t have any figures, but a stupid guess would be billions of dollars a year in operational costs, to cover our major cities.
What else can we do, once the plane has been hijacked? Ideally, of course, we would stop such an attack before it ever occurs, but as long as our airport security folks are paid near-minimum wages, I expect near-minimum performance out of them.
You seem to have left out the question, will Americans be willing to militarize their neighborhoods. It is one thing to say you are fighting terror - it is another thing to have a SAM site installed a block from your kid’s school. Neverminding the fact that this would be insanely expensive to do in every major city in the country (keeping in mind that these are large cities we’re talking about, and you have to have a crew at each site) and not very useful (given air traffic over large cities), of course.
Air patrols likely won’t be a possibility. Not with the amount of space we’re talking about. Scrambling fighters in 15 minutes is likely impossible, unless you’re on high alert 24/7. Running a full air patrol over every major city in the US at high alert would be hideously expensive, as you mention, and hard on man and machine.
Frankly, our best bet is to rely on passengers on the planes. I mean, if some terrorist asshat pops up a boxcutter and slices someone, that’s not exactly going to dissuade everyone on the plane from getting up and beating him to a bloody pulp, now that they know what is on the line (and that they won’t survive. Half of the success of the 9/11 hijackings was that the people on the planes thought that they were just being kidnapped).
How about some sort of fly-by-wire system whereby if a plane is hijacked, ground control can take control of the plane forcibly and render all controls on the plane itself useless, no matter what anyone on the plane does?
That being said, my environs has pretty much given up combat air patrols of F-16s because of cost issues. There’s now a couple of Customs Service UH-60s that are supposed to be able to intercept suspicious aircraft. No, I am not kidding.
We also have air defense systems deployed on the ground. They’re those Humvees with the Stingers on em.
The ‘debate’ (discussion of hypotheticals) is: What actual protections do we have against an airliner that has already been hijacked? Forget the pre-screening and whatnot for the moment. You know that a plane is hijacked and enroute to a target. What can possibly be done?
Granted, I don’t think the situation is as possible as it once was, since as has been mentioned, passengers will be far more likely to give the bum’s rush to any would-be hijackers. But it seems to me, the threat can also emerge from less-secure sources, such as cargo planes, private charter 737s, and even larger business jets, like the bigger Gulfstreams and whatnot. These are, to the best of my knowledge, outside of the official ‘security umbrella’ of the DHS (or whoever), and don’t have the option of passenger resistance to the same degree that a plane with 200 people on board does.
P.S. I also read about the Customs UH-60s around DC. All I can think is: WTF? I somehow doubt that Stingers have been mounted on these (not that a Stinger is a reliable way to down a large plane), so it kinda limits their usefulness, I would think.
I don’t buy the premise of the OP; I think it is very unlikely that hijackers will gain control of a jet anytime soon.
The whole reason 9/11 was possible was that prior to that, the paradigm for airline hijacking was that each individuals best chance of personal survival came from sitting still, and for the pilot the best chance of saving the largest numbers of his passengers lay in giving the hijackers what they wanted. Now the assumptions are fundamentally different: passengers will assume that the hijackers will want to crash the plane and act accordingly. Moreover, the pilot isn’t going to let them in the cockpit under any conditions, and he’ll crash the plane himself before giving up the stick.
Focusing on airline security to the extent you suggest would be a case of closing the barn door too late. The billions spent keeping fighters on patrol 24/7 forever would be much better spent on other things.
You seem to be looking for a perfect solution; one foolproof plan that solves the whole problem. That approach never works because it simply invites the other side to change the terms of the contest. Think of the Maginot Line: if you build a perfect defense on one border, they’ll just go around it. Spend billions making airliners perfectly safe, and they’ll just go around it and load 10 tons of ammonium nitrate onto a barge, sail into SF harbor and take down the Golden Gate Bridge.
This article explains some of the problems with that kind of thinking.
Armchair terrorism, what a hobby… Here are my thoughts:
**SAM’s ** - in theory there’s some potential there, but –
[ul]
[li]Consider the cost of deploying missile batteries/teams to every city in the United States of 1 million or more people. Or 100,000 or more people. Or next to important installations. Just consider the cost of arming NYC, DC, LA, and Chicago. Very expensive.[/li][li]SAM’s were developed for shooting down helicopters, if I have my history right. They don’t do so well with big airplanes. At least two cargo planes flying into/out of Baghdad airport have been hit with one in the past year, and in both instances pilots have retained sufficient control to land safely. You’ll need multiple SAM’s to take out a big Boeing or Airbus.[/li][li]Falling debris - not every SAM will hit, but every SAM will come down somewhere. Not to mention a successful shoot-down results in blazing debris falling over a wide area. This is likely to occur over populated areas, where flaming debris could cause considerable damage. A mid-air breakup results in a much larger debris field than a crashing plane that remains largely intact until impact.[/li][/ul]
Fighter shoot-down:
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[li]It takes time to scramble a fighter - 15 minutes is just barely enough time to get one from ground to air, it’s not enough time to intercept anything. Keep in mind that big jets can fly in the 400-500 mph hour range - the fighter isn’t catching up with a stationary target but a moving one. This compounds the difficulty.[/li][li]It is cost prohibitive to keep fighters in the air at all times over major cities. I’m not talking about just money - it’s costly in machine wear and maintenance, and we just don’t have enough air crews to man such patrols. We tried this after 9/11 for a brief while and had to stop. We could pour more resources in this solution, but it would take time to build the planes and train the pilots needed.[/li][li]You still have the problem of falling debris over an inhabited area. A human pilot might be able to time his attacks so the final hit occurs over less-occupied areas - but probably not. There’s not enough time, you have to stop the jet quickly because the darn thing moves so fast. Falling, flaming debris over a dense urban area could result in entire city blocks going up in flames, with massive damage and injuries resulting.[/li][/ul]
On the upside, this is arguably one of the more certain ways to bring down an errantant jet - if the first missile or barrage of bullets misses the pilot can try again. A human pilot can follow evasive manuvers. A human pilot in the loop is potentially better than a computerized IFF system, being able to deal with unforeseen circumstances better than a machine can.
Passenger revolt: This is probably our best bet at present. A small group of knife-wielding terrorists, no matter how trained, will be a poor match for hundreds of terrified people who are convinced they are going to die if the Bad Guys aren’t taken down, even if the mob is unarmed. Numbers do count. And the passengers are already there - no transit time involved, they can respond faster than the fastest military squad. However –
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[li]I’m not sure how you’d go about incapacitating the entire human payload on a passenger jet, but I think the potential is there. After all, the Moscow Theater incident involved knocking out a large number of people very quickly - it has been done. Yes, a lot of the people knocked out died - but terrorists aren’t going to care about that, are they?[/li][li]There are plenty of big jumbos utilized as cargo planes which are just as heavy, carry just as much fuel, and are potentially just as deadly as any passenger jet - but they typically only have small crews. They might be a much easier target.[/li][/ul]
You still have the problem of a jet potentially crashing into a dense urban area. However, the passengers will not disassemble a jet in flight as a missle would - you’d get a much more compact debris field. There will still be damage, but in a much smaller and therefore more easily contained area.
**My conclusion: ** it’s better by far to prevent the hijacking in the first place. But if that does occur, I feel our best options are (in order) passenger revolt, followed by a fighter shoot-down (IF the fighter can get there in time - a HUGE if). SAM’s have limited effectiveness against a big jumbo - sure, you might bring one down with a single SAM, but past history shows this is not always the case, even when scoring a direct hit on an engine.
You bring up some valid points here.
Air cargo security - You’re right, they don’t have the same security as the passengers. That’s because they need different security. While both passenger airliners and cargo flights carry baggage, boxes, etc., the cargo flight carry much more and, due to sheer volume of stuff, it may be easier to smuggle something like a bomb aboard than a hijacker. They need box inspectors more than shoe inspections. Cargo plane cockpits should have internal security, though, just to guard against the occassional stowaway (they do happen). Secure cockpit doors, for instance. But for cargo planes, controlling access is the key. A sweep of the plane by a security crew prior to take-off, and instituting systems that only permit authorized pilot access to the cockpit may be the most cost-effective system. But because they do different things than passenger planes, we shouldn’t assume the security system that works best for one works equally well for the other.
Private charter - again, the situation is somewhat different than the scheduled airlines. They have their own, separate set of regulations. Charter companies do not run on a fixed schedule - they have more flexibility to delay a flight in order to conduct a more thorough inspection if they feel it is warranted. Charter companies may have regular customers well known to company employees, including pilots and flight attendants, for whom less security inspecting is warranted because they are a known quantity. Charter can set its own rules about baggage, and have the authority to inspect baggage. Charter operating out of large passenger hubs can utilize the security in place for scheduled airlines for passenger screening (in fact, in some places like Midway and O’Hare even private pilots with privately owned aircraft must pass through metal detectors and submit to security before entering their own aircraft) Charter companies, on finding a suspicious passenger, may have more freedom than the airlines to refuse service (I’m not an expert on charter services) but they are certainly capable of calling a security hotline (which do exist) or even the ordinary police to detain a suspicious passenger.
Charter encompasses a wide range of aircraft - not just jumbo jets. The smaller the aircraft the less security - but also the less risk. The single engine prop planes you can charter out of my local airport do not have much security - but the damage they could do in any case is extremely limited. Again, it’s a matter of circumstances and potentials being different, so a different system may be warranted for maximum effectiveness.
Also consider that for business jets like Lears and Gulfstreams, the companies that own then are quite capable of instituting their own security, and it is in their self-interest to do so. If you own a Lear YOU can say who has access to it and who doesn’t, who can enter and who can’t, and under what conditions. It would be much, much harder to sneak a Bad Guy aboard because he can’t melt into the anonymous crowd.
The companies offering big jets and business jets have always had add-on options for private buyers such as security doors on the cockpit and even airplane-mounted missile defense systems. Some privately held jets are arguably safer than the passenger airlines. And some would be harder to shoot down - but such planes are closely guarded objects, given the money investment alone. Don’t assume that a different security system is automatically inferior - it might be better than what United, American, etc. are using.
DHS “security umbrella” - everybody in the US flies under this umbrella these days. Everybody. Including yours truly put-putting across the sky in an aging and decrepit Cessna 150, the glorified go-kart of the skies. Although most of the current stuff we pilots have to deal with is coming from the Transportation Security Agency these days, a particular division of the DHS. There have been changes made, even if you haven’t seen them. Are they effective? Well, airplane thefts have dropped since 9/11 (yes, airplanes do get stolen). Crop-dusters now must be kept under lock and key at all times when not in use. And so on and so forth. But again, it’s a matter of fitting the security to the object being secured rather than just applying a one-size-fits-all standard. I mean, it’s silly to insist I go through a metal detector before boarding a small airplane I am flying solo, a waste of time and resources. I’m not going to overpower and hijack myself. However, if I fly into an airport like, say, Midway, where I might potentially get into areas where I have access to big planes it might make a lot of sense to restrict my movement on the airport to certain areas (which wasn’t uncommon even before 9/11), send out a security crew if I wander into a forbidden area, and even inspect my airplane for contraband either coming in or going out.
And believe me, when we had an ice-storm this winter and the prop locks froze to the rental planes at my local airport we had a lot of grumbling about “new DHS bull----” from the line service. Well, it’s not bull----, we know that, but trust me, even the small plane pilots are doing things we didn’t do before 9/11. Sure, we grumble, it’s human nature, but the truth is, if intalling a prop lock is the trade-off for keeping our flying privileges we’ll do it. Heck, they existed before 9/11 and some people bought them - airplanes are frequently the most valuable object in the possession of a private owner. If people lock their $10,000 peice o’ crap cars and install the club, you can be darn sure they’ll exert some effort to secure their $100,000 and up airplane. And other little things - before 9/11, if no one was flying on the field we’d sometimes let curious general public types look up close at the airplanes unescorted. Now, the general public can still look at the planes - but only if they’re escorted while doing so. And someone back at the main building will also be keeping an eye on the group. My point is, there have been changes made even if they aren’t obvious to the public at large.
It’s not enough to simply set up a security system and let it run - you have to thoughtfully apply systems or they result in false security. You also have to fit the system to the situation, as well as retain a thoughtful human in the loop to consider situations not foreseen. And security doesn’t have to be visible to be present and/or effective.
sibyl, before I take this idea apart and demolish it, could you please tell me why YOU think this is a good idea? I’m curious - as a pilot I see so many things wrong with this that to me it’s obviously a bad idea, but I remind myself that a non-pilot has a very different viewpoint. Could you perhaps elaborate on why you see this as an option? I am genuinely curious as to why people keep bringing this up, and promise to discuss this in a thoughtful and respectful manner without personal attacks of any sort.
Remote control of passenger airplanes is a Bad Idea because:
What if the system activates when it’s NOT supposed to? You’ve just put a whole bunch 'o people at unnecessary risk
Obviously, there must be some sort of transmission between the ground base and the remote airplane. Well, transmissions can fail, or be full of interference. I can’t imagine that would be a good situation
Transmissions can be jammed. This would also be a bad thing.
If the Bad Guys gain control of the ground station they not only have one plane, in theory they have A LOT of airplanes which they can then steer remotely into various important things and places. This is worse than having a single airplane hijacked by a team of Bad Guys. Even better, from the Bad Guy point of view, is that this is no longer automatically a suicide mission. They could, in theory, kill LOTS AND LOTS of people and smash LOTS AND LOTS of stuff and then melt away into the underbrush.
Now, I did see a show recently called Innovations where they demostrated a new system for terrain avoidance - if you aim an airplane at, say, a moutain ridge and then take no action, the system first gives an audible warning, then, if nothing is still done, it turns the plane away from the obstacle. Now that might be a workable system - it can’t be co-opted from afar because it’s self-contained in the airplane. Program various obstacles - including tall buildings and/or restricted airspace - into the database and it won’t let you fly there.
However - the system is NOT fully developed yet, it’s still being developed and tested. And you still have the problem of how to deal with a malfunction. What if the system kicked and wouldn’t let you land the airplane? It’s not just a matter of letting the fuel run out - this thing would prevent a controlled touchdown if it malfunctioned in that manner. So… what do you do? Install an “off” switch? (Autopilots have off switches just in case they go berserk - which they have been known to do from time to time. Turn it off, and the pilot flies the old-fashioned way, entirely manually). OK - then how do you allow legitimate pilots to turn it off when needed, but prevent the Bad Guys from doing doing after they’ve slaughtered the flight deck crew?
Hey, it would be a GREAT safety system aside from the potential to prevent 9/11 style attacks, but it has to work in the real world. Every time. 99% is not good enough because YOU just might be unlucky enough to be on the airplane that falls into the 1%.
I don’t think there is anything to debate here. I recall reading a while back (don’t have the actual cite) that fighter jets are ready and waiting. If a commercial plane deviates from course by some amount without an adequate explanation, fighters will be scrambled. They will try to force the plane to land somewhere safe but if that doesn’t work, then they will shoot it down.
I think this applies to big commercial jets. But I wonder what would happen if terrorists coordinated say 20 smaller planes for simultaneous attacks? That would be ugly.
In reality, there are so many ways to attack a population that it is inevitable that something nasty will happen sometime (poison the water, biological agent (anyone watching 24? <lol>), blow-up chemical plants, plant bombs on trains, blow up key bridges, use simultaneous truck bombs like in Oklahoma, etc., etc…