Posted on 05/02/2013 8:54:46 AM PDT by Seizethecarp
Just as terrorists can use GPS guided drone/UAVs to target jet turbines in the Runway Kill Zone (RKZ) as explained in earlier posts to this blog (here), the quad-copter drone that was hovering in the JFK landing approach of an Alitalia jetliner on March 5, 2013 may have been the first terrorist attack in a Landing Approach Kill Zone (LAKZ). News coverage of the story can be seen here.
Using Jeppesen maps, a terrorist can determine the altitude that jetliners are supposed to fly at for each descending leg of a landing approach to a specific runway. At JFK on March 5, 2013, the Alitalia jet was approaching runway 31R. Going on the internet a recent Jeppesen map for that runway shows a leg approximately a mile in length right before Long Beach, NY (where the multi-copter drone was hovering) during which the airliner is supposed to hold steady at 1,900 feet.
Using newly available First-Person View (FPV) “video piloting” (here) the multi-copter’s remote pilot could hover the drone at 1,900 feet at the GPS coordinates of the Jeppesen landing approach to JFK runway 31R and visually guide the drone to target one of the jet turbine intakes on the Alitalia airliner.
Or even one of those large fireworks likes the Boston Bomber Jihadies used.
“It appears that Harry Potter fans have become interested in remote control aircraft and doomsday tales.”
Box cutters and pressure cookers were considered to be pretty harmless until relatively recently. It’s called creative, opportunistic asymmetric warfare, i.e. thinking outside the box...not “Harry Potter” magic at all, IMO.
“Consider a drone carrying few pounds of nitroglycerin or acetone peroxide hitting a wing fuel tank or the cockpit.”
Bird-strike crashes demonstrate that NO on board explosives are necessary when the relatively tiny mass of a bird as small as a kestrel, and certainly a larger goose gets amplified at take-off velocity generating sufficient KINETIC ENERGY to destroy jet turbine.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19950922-0
It some ways I am reluctant to offer ideas ... but exploring them is perhaps the best way to find a preventative. The Jihadies are quite cleaver - so they will probably figure out and attack plan on their own... However, one thing that has not been offered is using a proximity detonation of with fragmentation - kinda like the Jihadi’s pressure cooker bomb without the pressure cooker. The copter drone carries one of those large cannon burst fireworks wrapped with shrapnel. The copter drone is guided in as close as possible and remotely detonated... Run up several of these from different angles and I suspect it would have a pretty serious effect - ‘cause you only have to get close.
“Threads like this one make me glad that evil people aren’t often very dedicated to lifetimes of study or hard work in any single pursuit of skills or invention.”
Some aren’t, but some are.
You will recall that the 911 planning team were engineers who calculated that if they crashed a fully fueled 757 into a Trade Tower it would collapse the tower as it did.
In the first Trade Tower bombing in 1993, these same engineers ALMOST succeeded in causing one tower to fall into the other and they did this be figuring exactly the location in the basement of the first tower and how much explosive would be needed to achieve that exactly the way that a lumberjack aims a tree to fall in a certain direction.
They also sent four highly educated, intelligent men to flying school to learn how to fly after they had seized the aircraft opportunistically with BOXCUTTERS.
I regard these dedicated Islamists to be fully capable of continuing to find new ways to crash airliners adding to:
1. shoe bomb
2. underwear bomb
3. toner cartridge bomb
etc...
We must not underestimate our enemy!
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)
My general point is that there is no way to stop tens of millions of determined people creepy enough to be assassins because of their religion and culture from attacking us without destroying their will to fight on their own soil. Trying to catch them one or a few at a time, while they’re attacking or planning attacks, won’t work in the long run.
It’s also doubtful that we’ll turn ‘em all into homos and whores with cultural exchanges and monetary wealth (part of the problem). Some of the security methods used so far are causing a morale problem here, while the enemy is that-a-way (pointing to the Middle East and East)! We’ll have to fight a war and whip their behinds real good.
There have been only a few bird strikes that caused crashes with fatalities, but many more bird strikes that caused no fatalities and even more that didn’t cause much damage. I’m not an expert on that particular matter but have consulted today with one who knows quite a bit about it (military aircraft maintenance for quite a few years).
If there’s concern about airport security, then I’m sure that airport security folks have the tools they need to stop our enemies from flying model helicopters in paths of landing commercial aircraft. It’s highly likely that law is already in place for them to ground such obstructions.
For example, it’s probably not legal to fly any small aircraft in the direct path of a large aircraft and keep it there. I don’t know that for sure, buy you might check FAA documents. :-)
The JFK drone “hovering” in the landing approach was NOT detected by JFK civilian, military, or DHS radar by all accounts to date, nor has the FBI publicly identified the perpetrator of the near-miss.
The FAA issues “no-fly” advance warning announcements called NOTAMS to law-abiding citizens for all aircraft including model aircraft and drones when VIPS will be in an area. But terrorists will not observe these and there isn’t much evidence of detection ability by authorities for violations by mini-drone operators that I have seen.
The FBI asked the public near JFK to be vigilant and to report any past or future suspicious drone activity to them.
Cross-posting to thread posted today. Note that NO radar return was evident at JFK from the multi-copter reported by the Alitalia jetliner.
“Passenger plane involved in near miss with UFO near Glasgow airport”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3015077/posts
The UK Airprox Board – which investigates near misses in the skies – heard the incident had taken place at around 3500ft.
...
The report concluded: “Members were of the opinion that, in the absence of a primary radar return, it was unlikely that the untraced ac was a fixed-wing or rotary-wing ac or man-carrying balloon.
“It was considered that a meteorological balloon would be radar significant and unlikely to be released in the area of the Airprox.
“A glider could not be discounted but it was felt unlikely that one would be operating in that area, both due to the constrained airspace and the lack of thermal activity due to the low temperature.
“Similarly, The Board considered that a hang-glider or para-motor would be radar significant and that conditions precluded them, as they did para-gliders or parascenders. Members were unable to reach a conclusion as to a likely candidate.”
Here is a video of a swarm of about 49 multi-copters performing complex geometric maneuvers which industrious malevolent terrorists could migrate to the landing approach. Four sub-swarm groupings of multiple multi-copters could be maneuvered by GPS/inertial autonavigation to waypoint coordinates setting up a likely collision with each of the four engines of a jumbo-jet in a landing approach, for example at the previously referenced Jepessen point ZULAB in the ILS path to runway 31R.
“49 quadrocopter in outdoor-formation-flight / Ars Electronica Futurelab / Linz, Austria”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShGl5rQK3ew
ping...
Cross-posting:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3014940/posts?page=68#68
To: TalonDJ; Jim Robinson; Admin Moderator
“Loose lips sink ships.”
This is a serious charge, and one that I considered long and hard before going public with the exposure of the “V1-VR Runway Kill Zone.”
I kept it to myself for nearly six years after stumbling onto the concept in 2006, sharing it with the chief research officer of the Air Force and being told that I was the first one to bring it to their attention and did not object to me going public with it.
I asked myself how I would feel if terrorists destroyed a fully loaded passenger plane because the Runway Kill Zone vulnerability had not been defended against and the public had not been educated to be vigilant regarding drone activities near airports or near the POTUS.
After 9-11, how did the people who warned that unlocked cockpit doors would enable terrorists to turn airliners into flying suicide bombs capable of decapitating the US government? Would they have been called tinfoil, nutcase chicken-littles needlessly alarming themselves and the flying public? Absolutely. Now we should know better, OMO.
On 9-11, the passengers of only one of four jets counter-attacked the terrorists. They were “educated” by hearing over cellphones what could be in store for them and the nation. Better that they had been “educated” before 9-11 because passengers of ALL FOUR of the jets might have rebelled or better yet, locks would have been placed on cockpit doors.
I have concluded that it is patriotic to sound the alarm when a national security vulnerability is identified and to do whatever I can to educate the public and officials on how to identify a potential threat and to advocate for reasonable defensive measures.
Terrorists are not stupid, they are way ahead of the US government and the public in their use of creative opportunistic inexpensive asymmetric attacks...exactly like the opportunity presented every time a jetliner takes off.
If a fair-minded person spends a lot of time, as I have, on US government and defense-oriented public websites, every day new attack vectors that terrorists could exploit are discussed and war-gamed as to defenses. I believe it is obvious that discussion of the Runway Kill Zone is totally appropriate and does not violate “Loose lips sinks ships.”
Check out the former NTSB aviation security expert on the CBS NY affiliate immediately declaring the JFK drone event could be a terrorist attack and speculating that a drone could be directed into a jet engine achieving the same result as happened with Captain Sully (with video of the crash provided to the public) exactly as described on the Runway Kill Zone blog:
“FBI Investigating Report Of Possible Drone Spotted Near JFK”
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/05/fbi-investigating-report-of-possible-drone-spotted-near-jfk/
Sean Hennessey is the CBS2 News reporter who covered the JFK story.
Al Yurman, former NTSB investigator:
“You take an object that weighs 20-25 pounds and it can do a lot of damage to a plane trying to land.
“If the object gets in the wrong place, like the engine or it happens to hit the windshield, depending on the weight, it could cause the plane to make an emergency landing.”
“Look no further than the 2009 ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ when a flock of geese got into the engines crippling an Airbus A320 forcing the pilot to make an amazing landing in the Hudson River.
“Something that small probably won’t show up.” (on the airport radar)
Lloyd Bennett Field (model aircraft field near JFK)
68 posted on Friday, May 3, 2013 12:59:59 PM by Seizethecarp ((Defend aircraft from “runway kill zone” mini-drone helicopter swarm attacks: www.runwaykillzone.com)
“How many more nutty conspiracy theories do you have post as threads?”
Please take note of my comment copied to JR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3014942/posts?page=58#58
“Kind of like shooting a musket ball out of the air with a slingshot.”
See below analysis from which could apply to GPS targeting of large jet engine on the runway or on a predictable ILS landing approach:
If any two engines on a large multi-engine jet can be disabled in the RKZ by a terrorist attack, the aircraft will not be able to gain enough altitude to return to the airport and will almost certainly crash. The availability of inexpensive, GPS-guided autonomous model aircraft and helicopters (drones and UAVs) that are capable of precisely targeting the runway path of each jet engine in the RKZ makes terrorist attacks increasingly probable.
How big a target for terrorists is the intake turbofan of a Boeing 747 jet engine coming down the runway in the RKZ?
The intake fan diameter of the GE CF6-80C2 turbofan used on Air Force One or a 747-400 is 93 inches (2.36 m) or nearly 8 feet wide (7 ft 9 in).
Are the GPS autopilot systems available for model aircraft and helicopters accurate enough in latitude, longitude and altitude to hit an 8 foot wide target, such as a 747 engine coming down a runway?
The latest drone, UAV, model aircraft and model helicopter GPS autopilot systems are designed to enable autonomous flight and incorporate location accuracy enhancement technologies called DGPS and WAAS. These GPS enhancements enable a location accuracy radius within the radius of a 747 engine intake ( 1/2 of 2.36 meter diameter = 1.18 meters, or 1/2 of 93 inch diameter = 3 ft 8.5 inches).
DGPS location accuracy according to Wikipedia:
“Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) is an enhancement to Global Positioning System that provides improved location accuracy, from the 15-meter nominal GPS accuracy to about 10 cm in case of the best implementations.”
WAAS location accuracy according to Wikipedia:
“Actual performance measurements of the system at specific locations have shown it typically provides better than 1.0 metre (3 ft 3 in) laterally and 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) vertically throughout most of the contiguous United States and large parts of Canada and Alaska.”
What happens if GPS autopilot systems are jammed or the link to a base station gets dropped during a drone attack in the RKZ?
Inertial navigation systems (INS) can take over from the last confirmed GPS coordinates. INS compoments are now available for model aircraft autopilot systems either incorporated into the autopilot system or interfaced to the autopilot system.
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