Pentagon Wants Kill Switch For Planes 548
mytrip writes "The Pentagon's non-lethal weapons division is looking for technologies that could 'disable' aircraft, before they can take off from a runway — or block the planes from flying over a given city or stretch of land. The Directorate's program managers don't mention how engineers might pull off such a kill switch. But, however it's done, they'd like to have a similar system for boats, as well. They're looking for a device that can, from 100 meters away, 'safely stop or significantly impede the movement' of vessels up to 40 feet long, with 'minimal collateral damage.'"
You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an idea for you: broadcast the hijacker transponder code and jam the voice frequencies. After ground stations get no response, a twitch General will order the plane shot down. No sense trying to smuggle a bomb onboard when you can get the Pentagon to do it for you.
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as a sad little comparison: On average, each and every 36-hour-period from 1994 through 2007 had more people die in traffic accidents [1] than this huge headline-making bomb. 9/11, OTOH, took almost four weeks to be offset by road fatalities (and caused four^Wseven years of all-out war against freedom (and the middle east)). Strange, eh?
[1] http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx [dot.gov]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pakistan
Iraq
Philipines
Iraq
Pakistan
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Thailand
Pakistan
Pakistan
United Arab Emirates
Yemen
Georgia
Pakistan
Pakistan
Afghanistan
Germany
Notice a pattern? I see two. Pakistan and not Iraq.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think invading Iraq was the right thing to do in retrospect, but couldn't it have a "swamp draining" effect on terrorism?
No, because there were no [international] terrorists in Iraq at the time of the invasion. There were defintely no Al Queda terrorists in Iraq. If there was one government that bin Ladin hated more than the US and Israel it was the secular Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. To make your swamp analogy accurate - the Iraq war was like re-directing a river to MAKE a swamp. It would seem less than rational to be creating swamps when you are tying to get rid of them.
Don't confuse Al Queda in Iraq with the
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It doesn't help their "organization" any that Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave, or that we keep killing all their officers [globalsecurity.org] in that silly, unjustifiable war in Iraq...
"im in ur base, killin ur doodz", as it were.
Well yeah. But the the real problem seems to be the quality of people that volunteer in Europe.
E.g. Richard Reid trying to light Semtex with a cigarette lighter, or the guys that attacked Glasgow Airport and ended literally dieing in a fire but failing to kill a single other person. Someone said "these guys must have ridden the short bus to terrorist school". But they were NHS Doctors. Or the guys that did the 21st July bombings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_July_2005_London_bombings [wikipedia.org]
The detonators worked
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I know that the Oklahoma bombing occurred. That's where I found out the mixture from. What I was referring to was terrorists doing so. What my post revolves around was that they haven't made a huge move since 9/11 (even though it's so easy), not that such a bomb has never gone off in the US.
Timothy McVey WAS a terrorist.
Actually it's not so easy any more. You try being a middle eastern man or woman and buying 5,000 lbs of fertilizer. For that matter, try being a white anglo-saxon and buying that much fertilizer and not be a farmer known to your local ag dealer.
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like they didn't do their homework, if they're trying to bring a religious war to Glasgow.
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
I think we should get a photo of that guy KICKING A FLAMING MAN, blow it up and make it the welcome sign at Glasgow Airport. Underneath we should have the words 'Glasgow Welcomes Careful Drivers'..."
-- Billy Connolly
So two idiots messed up... (Score:3, Informative)
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Looks like they didn't do their homework, if they're trying to bring a religious war to Glasgow.
That's like pissing in an ocean of piss ;-)
There was a funny article in some tabloid with the excellent headline
"I kicked a burning terrorist in the balls so hard I tore a tendon in my foot"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smeaton_(baggage_handler) [wikipedia.org]
John Smeaton QGM (born Bishopton, Renfrewshire in 1976) was a Scottish baggage handler at Glasgow International Airport. He became involved in thwarting the 2007 Glasgow International Airport Attack. Smeaton lives in Erskine, Renfrewshire,[4] a town outside the
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
It's called "Celtic vs Rangers"
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I have no idea how you got modded so insightful.. are airline jets now somehow regarded as the most effective weapon on earth since Sept 11th? Almost anything can be an effective weapon if you know how to use it. A missile happens to be one of the most effective weapons ever created though, and is much preferable in a lot of situations to a passenger jet.
COST: If you're on a budget they are.
EFFECTIVENESS: Two airliners brought down the WTC buildngs, and two missiles could never have done that. Hint: it was the fuel, not the impact.
ECONOMICS: Crashing airliners also have the advantage of crippling your transporation system and causing economic damage far out of proportion to the physical damage they might do.
AVAILABILITY: How many airliners are there within 50 miles of you right now, and you can get on any of them for a $200 ticket. How many missiles are t
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Do you think terrorists are going to BUY an airplane!? LOL
Having myself been trapped in Europe after 9/11 because of the shutdown in air travel I know that terrorist activites with airplanes disrupts the transporation system even when runways aren't destroyed. But even that was short-lived. The big problem is if there is another terrorist use of an aircraft there will be world-wide effects on air travel, security, and commerce. The only bright spot in the US
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not get a group of engineers together and say, come up with a contingent plan for hijackings. This would open the door to creative solutions other than kill switches.
Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Locked door or not, after 9/11 it is no longer possible to hijack a plane and fly it into a building.
Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If the door opens inward, it cannot be opened during flight due to the pressure difference between the in- and outside of the craft.
Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
This risk is mitigated via use of an innovation referred to as a "co-pilot".
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Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, right after that, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks a tricycle that Bruce Willis rode through Area 51 to save E.T. right up into the stratosphere where it smashes into an exploding asteroid seventeen times the size of the sun, thereby breaking said asteroid into twenty-two pieces. The single large piece proceeds to not hit earth and destroy civilization by four meters (it breaks off the antennas of both the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building), the smaller ones are deflected by some jedis with light sabres, only to hit The Terrerist and each one of the Evil Engineers right into the face, killing them. Also, explosions, a sex scene without the girl taking her bra off, a scene in a strip bar and more explosions.
Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone else pointed out, what gave the 9/11 hijackers an advantage was that SOP was to give in to hijacker demands and everyone would be okay. The authorities could try to catch them later. Now, if anyone tries a hijacking, everyone will try to kill them. The passengers will figure they have nothing to lose since, if they don't try to kill the hijackers, they will all die anyway.
Re:You say: Hijacking "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
You live in a post-9/11 world. You're on a plane. Somebody gets up, pulls out a box cutter and starts threatening passengers in an attempt to get the cockpit open. Do you:
1. Open the cockpit and let him fly the plane into a building, or
2. Jump the motherfucker along with half the other passengers on the plane?
That's why he and I are so sure that it won't happen again. Like he said, policy used to be "do whatever they say" because the assumption was they just wanted to get someplace and run off. The assumption now is "they're going to fly this plane into a building," whether that's right or wrong. I don't know about you, but I assume my chances of survival to be pretty low if my plane is flown into a building, so I'm going to jump the fucks even if I do risk being spliced up potentially to the point of death. Death sucks pretty much either way for me, but I like my own odds better trying to do something to stop it and I acknowledge that if I'm a goner either way the best case is for there to be as few other deaths as manageable.
For that matter, terrorists are not stupid. 9/11 was a pretty brilliant plot: they identified weak points in a part of our country, including policy for how to react to what they were about to do and the fact that we were basically not looking; they exploited these weak points, poor policy decisions and general naiveté of the populace; and they did so in a way that made people literally terrified to use something that days before had been ingrained in our culture. They won't that round big time.
Do you really believe round two is going to be done in the same manner? In a place we've fortified, changed our policies about and are watching to the point of unhealthy obsession? They're going to look for the NEXT target where they can exploit their way to success--and I'm sure there are many of them. If I had to pick a place I felt the MOST safe from a terrorist attack post 9/11, it would be on an airplane. Hell, I'd be more afraid in the lines at the security checkpoints. If I were a terrorist, I'd detonate my bomb there.
It's not an impossibility, no; few things are when dealing with predicting human behaviors. But it's almost certainly low enough risk now that we don't need to be focusing all our energy there--and should never have been to begin with.
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What they needed was an equalizer. Something small and compact like a S&W M&P 45 with hollow points would take care of business.
Govt can't think outside the box (Score:5, Insightful)
And hey NSA: Why are you wasting time logging and reading my message? Why aren't you looking in the caves of North Pakistan for you-know-who? You guys get heaps of cash. Please spend it sensibly.
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You're assuming that they didn't already have huge numbers of such engineers together and among the top recommendations was this gem. That said, it does seem like a reasonable assumption, but we do have to recognise it as an assumption. All we really know is the output from whatever meetings they may have held, and not how they got there.
Also, keep in mind some constraints. This is the Pentagon looking, not the FAA. It is outside the Pentagon's purvue to dictate the make-up of civilian aircraft. It is
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:4, Funny)
Duh.
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Funny)
You'll "safely stop" it from flying - you just wont be able to safely stop it from hitting the ground and crash landing.
All semantics... it's no longer in flight when it's bursting into pieces on the ground due to impact. The flight portion though, remains quite safe (if scary) right up until that point.
:-)
Re:You say: "Defense"... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hiroshima was about 70,000 immediately and 90,000 - 140,000 from radiation etc by the end of the year.
Nagasaki was about 40,000 to 75,000 immediately and up to 80,000 by the end of the year.
So, the Atomic bombings were worse.
And don't worry, they'll have encryption (Score:5, Funny)
Have you bought a ticket lately? (Score:5, Funny)
Delta seems to have the edge on this market already.
Block them from flying over cities? (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell do they intend to pull that off without collateral damage. Force fields? Giant shark balloons?
What do all fuel engines have in common? (Score:5, Funny)
And what will plug and exhaust pipe non-lethally?
Potatoes!
ergo we need to genetically engineer jet-engine size potatoes and precision potato canons.
Profit!
Re:What do all fuel engines have in common? (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm. Smells like french fries.
Re:What do all fuel engines have in common? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Block them from flying over cities? (Score:5, Funny)
How the hell do they intend to pull that off without collateral damage. Force fields? Giant shark balloons?
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If they already knew they wouldn't be asking for proposals.
Just to conjecture a bit, one possibility might be some sort of override of the electrical systems, although it'd be tricky to do this in a way which would still allow the plane to land and/or make the effect temporary. For a more outlandish idea, maybe fire some sort of self-attaching flap at the airplane which could adjust itself depending on
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Sounds like a recipe for the next "unexplained" 737 crash though.
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Of course then we'll need bigger bigger plane in case they get a bigger plane.
Minimal collatoral damage (Score:2)
A "kill switch" as of now means an F-18A intercepting it and shooting it down.
Re:Minimal collatoral damage (Score:5, Informative)
The term "kill switch" was a journalistic flair added by Wired, and doesn't actually occur anywhere in the Request for Proposals [fbo.gov].
Re:Minimal collatoral damage (Score:5, Insightful)
REMOTE CONTROL (Score:4, Insightful)
All you need is a few cameras, some electronics, a computer, and a radio. It isn't rocket science.
As for small private boats and cars, this is a phenominally stupid idea. First, it won't work. Any asshat looking to use a boat to blow something up is going to get the cheapest one available... which means one built in the 1980's wwithout any electronic controls at all.
Or they will buy a new one and just retrofit the damn thing to work around a kill switch. Just slap an old V8 in there, or build their own electronic fuel injection control (almost trivially easy) and shield the hell out of it and the kill switch is dead itself.
For large commercial jets, making them remote-able isn't a problem, and the airlines would go along with it for just the liability protection alone. For personal vehicles, fuhgeddaboudit.
Failsafe automated landings (Score:3, Interesting)
Close, but this can be abused. The better solution is an automated landing system with a failsafe.
Basically, if the pilot (or whoever you enable on the flight, stewardesses, whatever) gets scared enough he initiates an automated landing that can't be overridden without replacing the airplane's control system.
The system finds the nearest capable landing site without severe weather, declares an emerge
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Except back march 4th 2001. It was more subverted by the govt to crash into the WTC to preempt a war, and hacked by the lone gunmen to keep it from crashing, but same concept of remote control abuse.
Crazy crazy writers..
And how to prevent malicious usage? (Score:4, Insightful)
And then how can you prevent that kill switch from being disabled?
Boats aren't that complex, especially if you have a diesel engine, where electricity is not required.
Airplanes could be made without that special "feature".
Re:And how to prevent malicious usage? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell are they going to do with it? Once they are installed and there is no longer any use in trying to use a plane for terrorist activities and the terrorist turn to the much easier alternative that they already have
It's all a ruse to continue the 'war on terror' and the multibillion dollar boondoggle of the American populace. $4/gallon is nothing once we start paying for all these unnecessary anti-terrorism measure it will be up to $15/gallon or higher.
Actually the only word that I can think of for the focus on air transport is criminal. Nothing less is behind it.
As myself and many others will point out, there are PLENTY of other worthy methods of terrorism. Picking the most guarded of them is hardly filed under 'surprise attack' in the terrorist's field manual.
Back to basics here:
Where are the terrorists? Prove it!
What will they use to attack? Prove it!
Why won't they use other, simpler methods? Prove it!
If you can answer those three in support of beefing up air transport security I will quickly ask why you have not gone out and apprehended them already since you know who is guilty of what and why, and apparently have the fucking proof.
I'm so tired of these ineffective and inconvenient excuses for the government to steal my rights in the name of protecting me. Fuck off already. At the rate things are going, the next round of so called 'terrorists' will actually be citizens revolting against the protective measures.... arrgghhhh
Additionally... (Score:5, Funny)
"Minimum Collateral Damage"... (Score:5, Interesting)
-- boost the reception range in order to deceive or seduce the cockpit,
-- bypass security (long accept command if wheels up, over 100 kph indicated, if turbines over 25%, if altimeter log indicates movement inconsistent with runway traffic...), to force unwitting external (non-pilot) command input
-- trick the ground-based systems to interfere with runway traffic to cause on-ground, or taxi-vs land traffic...
-- trigger false halts and false diverts to wreak havoc upon ATC or military airspace controllers when the aircraft (in real-time or by delayed instruction) fail to "squawk" back...
then all hell could break loose. Don't think I wanna be on one of those planes... nor near one...
Basically, they want radio-controlled, perimeter-restricted shopping carts that work on the ground or in the air.... roi...ght....
Re:"Minimum Collateral Damage"... (Score:5, Funny)
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only law abiding citizens will be effected (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how often tasers are used as pain-forced compliance devices as opposed to an alternative to an actual deadly force situation, I don't think non-lethal disabling technologies do anything but provide the government with media friendly ways to suppress dissent.
Who'll pay for it and other problems (Score:3, Interesting)
As for boats, how in the world are they planning on stopping sail boats? Most smaller boats (16-24 feet or so) don't even have outboard motors let alone any electronics. Are they going to require motorized sails on the boats that will roll the sails up on command? Or an anchor dropping mechanism? How do you deal with small boats that are just a fiberglass hull, mast, and sail?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't crash a boat like that into much of anything and do any serious damage(without a lot of explosives at least), you can't outrun a motor launch in one of those, and you're not likely to get in a situation where there's a lot of innocent people on one of them and they're not too hard to sink.
Poor choice of words (Score:2)
Just sayin'.
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Funny)
It's not the terrorists I'm afraid of anymore... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've really gotta stop reading slashdot, to save my health.
Not thinking big enough (Score:2)
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_Now_ how do people feel about Amtrak? (Score:5, Insightful)
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(p.s. I love trains... Japanese ones beat planes for 1 hour flights)
How about deploying the chute? (Score:2)
If terrorists take over a plane, just deploy that sucker.
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Hmmm... (Score:2)
Soft Walls discussion and common objections (Score:5, Informative)
There was discussion on Slashdot about the Soft Walls Project [berkeley.edu] that did something similar. See the 1/04 [slashdot.org] and 7/03 [slashdot.org] discussions.
What I find interesting is just how vehement software engineers and pilots are about the idea, and yet everyone seems to trust fly-by-wire.
There is Soft Walls FAQ [berkeley.edu] that covers common objections.
Re:Soft Walls discussion and common objections (Score:5, Informative)
"the Soft Walls system will choose the strategy that is most likely to protect the no-fly zone, even if it puts the airplane and its passengers at risk."
Gee, I wonder why pilots don't like the idea...
No "Kill Switch" (Score:3, Informative)
It seems we might already have a kill switch (Score:5, Interesting)
Er, I think today's passengers will handle this (Score:5, Insightful)
911 really blew the hijacker's wads, because there are no longer compliant airline passengers.
There will never be another hijacking unless the sole purpose is to crash the aircraft arbitrarily - in which case a kill switch wouldn't really hurt the hijacker's plans.
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http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1824462620070819 [reuters.com]
The passengers went along with it until the plane landed.
Kill the switch (Score:3, Funny)
Here's a crazy thought .. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Where have we heard this before? (Score:3, Interesting)
Typical moronic Pentagon mentality. Plan for what's already happened and won't happen again. Something that would accomplish this will cost billions, probably not work on motors that were protected by the proverbial tinfoil hat, and could be defeated by a pissed-off 10-year-old with two cell phones and a pack of bubble gum.
There's times when technology and politics meet in a very ugly, venal way. This is one of those times. It has "Pork Barrel" written all over it.
How to do it right (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a way to do this right. Read this article about the F-16 GCAS [f-16.net]. This is a ground collision avoidance system that works so well it can be used on combat missions, including flying through mountain passes at 500 knots, 200 feet from rock. Pilots call it "You can't fly any lower". When the Auto-GCAS decides a ground collision is imminent, it takes over the aircraft, rolls to wings-level and initiates a pull-up. (In an F-16, the roll is at 180 degrees per second and the pull-up is at 5G; for an airliner, much lower numbers would be configured and recovery would be initiated much sooner.) Read the article; fighter jocks liked the thing, and those guys usually hate letting the automation take over the aircraft.
This would prevent most "controlled flight into terrain" accidents (there are about three of those involving commercial jets per year, worldwide), so there's a big win in having this independent of military/terrorism worries. Once you have a system like this, it can be given "no-fly" areas into which it won't let the plane go. If you're going to enforce "no-fly" zones via hardware, it's better to do it through a system that knows about terrain and is looking at it with radar.
The way to do overrides would be to give the pilot a switch to turn off the system in an emergency, but doing so sends out an emergency transponder signal that this has been done. The ground then has the option of sending up a suitably encrypted signal to turn it back on. This gives a way to handle system failures. If the ground sees a plane heading somewhere it shouldn't be, the ground can force the system back on.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Airbus starts offering something like this. (Airbus takes the position that the aircraft should protect itself against pilot errors. Boeing has the philosophy that the pilot should always be able to override the automation. The Boeing approach worked better back when the typical airline pilot had 10,000 hours, a previous military flying career, and was chosen competitively from a big pool of applicants.)
Re:Drones "Reapers"? (Score:2, Funny)
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Any kind of remote control system could potentially be disabled (probably before takeoff), and there is always the possibility that a plane without the remote control system could be used.
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That was my first thought too, but then the problem becomes "minimal collateral damage." When a plane gets hit with by the EMP it WILL go down. I suppose they could always give it some kind of inflatable protective airbag structure like they used for the Mars Exploration Rover [space.com], though I don't know I'd want to be a passenger in this scenario (I just imagined being flung all around the cabin while the plane bounces around).
Re:Something like (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in a regular general aviation plane with a real electrical system, all an EMP will do is fry the navigational and communications equipment. Unlike computer controlled fuel injectors, most small aircraft engines operate 100% mechanically. The control surfaces are all mechanical, except possibly for some "fancy options", such as an electrical trim system. But even then, electrical (non-electronic) equipment won't be damaged by an EMP.
EMP pulses break electronic things by inducing voltages high enough to destroy P-N junctions. They're not Star Wars tractor beams.
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So if you're in the plane that's hit by the EMP, don't worry. It'll keep flying, and the pilot will s
Re:Something like (Score:5, Interesting)
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