On another thread, this one, there has been some discussion of shooting down a hijacked passenger jet which poses a threat to an important target.
What would it take for the military to actually do such a thing?
I’m not of a military mind, so I have no idea.
Peace,
mangeorge
Orders, I suppose.
It’s been reported that, while it appears that passenger action aborted the hijack that ended in PA, an F-16 was in hot pursuit. While there may be someone out there who would argue against it, my acquaintance and I have discussed the issue in recent days and have pretty much agreed that, in the context of what was happening Tuesday, it would have been acceptable for the Air Force to disable the jetliner realizing the risk at which such action would put the passengers.
When sociopaths force you into it, making the choice between saving 100 lives versus 1000 lives is a simple question to answer. Yes, 0 lives at risk would be preferable, but that was not an answer on the test.
The only difficult part I would imigian would be where to drop the plane – over a field or forest would be best…shooting down a 737 over a city is going to lower deaths some, but the bird has to land somewhere. Also, those aircraft are larger than your normal jet fighter. Air to air missles generally have very small warheads, so it may take 2 or 3 shots.
I would argue that only in the ultimate, final moment possible would they “shoot down” a hijacked passenger jet. I mean, there are ways to force another plane to land or go in the direction you’d like, within reason of course. I cite the accounts of how Chinese fighters were able to direct our crippled “spy” plane to Hainan Island. Granted the plane was damaged, but if an obviously skilled (he amazingly saved the plane) pilot is unable to go where he wants to go, how is a hijacker gonna do it?
Okay, there may be a lot of exceptions to that scenario, but the point is: I wouldn’t expect a “pull over or we’re gonna blow you to bits” reaction.
It could likely be 1) shoot one engine, 2) drive the plane down to a possible landing site and 3) pray that somehow, somebody survives.
Number one being that the american pilots of that surveilance craft surely had a desire to live through the event…
Sure, but by that reasoning, the hijackers/terrorist surely would have the desire to reach their target/destination… doesn’t change the fact that flight paths can be “altered”, IMHO.
Do we have any way of boarding a plane in flight? Like coming up underneath via the belly of the craft, or similar, so they can’t see us except by radar?
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mangeorge,
Rumor has it from the media…coulda been ABC, NBC or CBS in the last week, but apparently the White House has the capability to shoot down any stray aircraft from the around the White House.
Again this is rumor as I heard it on the one of the stations listed above this last week. Why some dude crashed into the White House during the Clinton administration is beyond me but I am not one to really question the White House as I find a lot of the security more lax than it should be when it comes to our nation’s leaders.
In either case, they have the measures, I just don’t think they had the preparadness (sp) needed for the week’s events. Pretty scary shit if if you ask me.
Logistics, eh?
Well, there is a bit of an issue with the targeting. A heat-seeking missle will go after the engines, while a radar-guided one will just hit somewhere random. If you really wanted to take a plane down FAST, I would think shooting 3 or 4 infrared missles at it would probably suffice to take off a wing, and the remains wouldn’t even glide very well.
I seem to remember reading that sometime after the small Cessna crashed into the White House that they installed defenses to guard against it happening again. Maybe doing some searches on articles related to that Cessna would hold a nugget of information relating to White House defense. Just a thought.
Relating to SmackFu’s comment, do they not have heat seeking missiles without explosive power, ie. enough to punch a big hole but not blow off the wing? Of course, any engine damage could take out a tail fin…
Air to air missles never really do strike their target. They get close enough to the plane for it to be in a “cone of destruction” and self destruct. The resulting explosion and peppering of the aircraft with shrapnel is what brings it down. Actually striking an aircraft with a missle is a difficult proposal. Remember that the missles are designed to hit targets that will try to dodge them.
Maybe we are thinking too much firepower then.
How about some good, old fashioned 20 mm bullets to make the airplane simply unflyable - then the hijackers land it, or they don’t, but the sight of the US Air Force blowing an American/Ally passenger jet out of the sky would be a harrowing one to say the least…
Shooting the planes down would be no problem. However, after studying these maps, I don’t see how it could be done without causing great devastation on the ground. Especially in NYC.
In deciding to proceed, the leaders would have to consider many factors.
[list=1]
[li]What the heck is going on?[/li][li]What is the target?[/li][li]Will the collateral damage be worse than it would be to the target?[/li][li]Is there a chance the crew/passengers will subdue the hijackers?[/li][/list=1]
I can just imagine the damage that would be caused by an airliner, traveling at 300mph and full of gas, going down in such densely populated areas. Especially if it hit at a low angle.
I wouldn’t want to have to be the one to make the decision or pull the trigger.
Peace,
mangeorge
Amen.
beatle said:
This choice is made all the time in a variety of situations involving hostages or police chases or the like. Usually, there is a little more time to think about it, but in general, they go with what they think will cause the least loss of life. In this case, that would have been shooting down the plane. There was no good option.
F-15s and F-16s are both armed with 20mm machine guns. As Powers posted, if the plane could be diverted over water -Atlantic ocean or Long Island sound in the case of the NY planes- the plane could be forced to a lower altitude and one of the engines disabled or destroyed and the plane forced to ditch with hopefully minimal loss of life. Just a theory.
Pebs
I’ve heard that a fighter jet was 70 miles away from the 2nd plane that hit the WTC but was denied permission to fire missiles at it. And I was told that the missiles would have hit the commercial jet before it hit the tower.
These are the two most important phrases in your statement. So let’s start at the top, where did you hear this? Who told you this?
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You can’t force a plane to do anything with another plane. You can hit it with your plane, you can shoot near it to make the pilot reconsider his options, you can contact it by radio and threaten it, but you can’t get in its way and make it go left or down or whatever. Think about it.
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A suicidal hijacker is unlikely to pull over and land when ordered to by the ‘police’. Think about it.
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I used to (many years ago) reduce data from filmed weapons tests of different missiles, including the then current version of the Sidewinder. Trust me, it usually hits. (Fun to watch at 100 frames per second)
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Air-to-air missles have fragmentation or expanding-rod warheads, and will do lots of damage to a civilian aircraft. On a non-manuevering, lumbering target like a jetliner, hits are a fore-gone conclusion.
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While that damage may or may not actually “destroy” the aircraft, it will almost certainly make it unflyable. Result: Crash.
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That crash may take a while to happen, so blasting away at the aircraft just short of the target is contra-indicated.
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A rake of 20mm canon fire along a wing-root would likely cause the wing to break off, resulting in an immediatly unflyable aircraft, quickly followed by a spectacular crash, but the target aircraft would still have significant forward velocity, so unless it’s at altitude (where it has time to turn vertical), you’re still going to get a long swath of destruction at ground level.
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A rake of canon-fire across the tail control surfaces will have the same general effect, just not as spectacular. IIRC, this is what the Soviets did to that civilian airliner in the Pacific.
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It’s highly unlikely that any fighter aircraft was notified, scrambled, located the hijacked airplane, and was in a position to fire in just 18 minutes. Our Air Force is good, but they’re not psychic. 70 miles is not engagement range in an airspace as crowded as NYC, anyway.
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Even if there was such an intercept, by the time the authorities able to make a shoot-down decision were briefed, it would’ve been too late pull the trigger.
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The White House defenses are believed to be Stinger missile emplacements, pretty much useless as a terminal defense against a suicide airliner: They may shoot it down, but too late to stop it from reaching the White House. Come to think of it, unless you open fire at a significant range, almost nothing in our inventory would stop the terminal plunge of something as big as an airliner (Think: The barracks in Riahd[sp?], Saudi Arabia after a successful Patriot intercept of a Scud missile. Successful from a purely military standpoint, but we still sustained casualties. All that falling metal has to go somewhere). When I say significant range, I’m taking about as far out as Washington National for aircraft at high altitude, down to about a mile and a half for low-flying aircraft.