In brief, plain speech, it would be too difficult for anyone to hit a jet engine on a landing aircraft with a tiny, remote controlled helicopter. A tiny, remote controlled helicopter would be seen well in advance of doing any damage—not a situation that terrorists would like. Those toys have very limited time in the air (batteries) and are very easily affected by winds.
If a large jet aircraft were to hit such an object, it would probably land safely enough anyway. Many large aircraft that hit birds have landed intact except for engine/windscreen damage. Our enemies could much more easily design and build rockets to do that kind of damage to us, but they simply haven’t been so technologically motivated, yet. Even more easily than that, terrorists could buy antiaircraft weapons from the countries of our “trading partners” so preferred by big shot constituents over us: their own fellow Americans.
Cross-posting from my other thread today:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3014940/posts?page=52#52
To: DCBryan1
“Mini copters hitting a 747 ain’t going to bring it down.”
Thanks for your comment. I appreciate real-world military related experience.
Your examples did not involve intentional ingestion of a drone by a high-bypass turbofan...a very delicate machine.
As posted up-thread, here, again is the link to the crash of a 747 freighter which was done in by a tiny kestrel bird:
“The aircraft experienced a stall in its inboard right-hand Pratt & Whitney JT9D engine after it ingested a kestrel during the take-off roll on 25 May last year.”
A single Canada Goose can take out a jet engine as seen with Captain Sully’s crash in the Hudson and with the AWACS Yukla-27 crash, and they weigh less and have softer parts than available cheap multi-copters.
Here is the accident report on the AWACS Yukla-27, which inspired my blog (please check the blog out when you get home!):
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19950922-0
52 posted on Thursday, May 2, 2013 2:48:38 PM by Seizethecarp ((Defend aircraft from “runway kill zone” mini-drone helicopter swarm attacks: www.runwaykillzone.com)