Thought provoking links. Very instructive. Thanks for posting!
“Thought provoking links. Very instructive. Thanks for posting!”
Thanks, Old Sarge!
The author of the blog, “2branta” (gee, I wonder who that could be?) took that name to memorialize crash of AWACS Yukla 27 which was brought down by as few as two Canada Geese, aka Branta Canadensis, thus 2branta.
Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Geese
“This species is 76–110 centimetres (30–43 in) long with a 127–180 centimetres (50–71 in) wingspan. The male usually weighs 3.2–6.5 kilograms (7.1–14 lb), and can be very aggressive in defending territory. The female looks virtually identical but is slightly lighter at 2.5–5.5 kilograms (5.5–12 lb), generally 10% smaller than its male counterpart, and has a different honk.”
Captain Sully hit several of these and suffered a total loss of thrust. A cartoonist pictured terrorists directing trained Canada Geese to bring Sully down, so the concept of reverse-engineering bird-strike aircraft destruction is out there for any alert terrorists to pursue.
Terrorists are already known to be experimenting with drones and thinking about how to kill large numbers of Americans with them:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/armed-drones_n_2527242.html
WASHINGTON — As the technology for arming drones spreads around the world, terrorists could use the unmanned, missile-firing aircraft to attack and kill the president and other U.S. leaders, the former chief of U.S. intelligence said Tuesday.
Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who served as President Obama’s first director of national intelligence, told reporters he was concerned that the proliferation of armed drones — a potential outgrowth of the U.S. reliance on drones to attack and kill terrorists — could well backfire.
“I do fear that if al Qaeda can develop a drone, its first thought will be to use it to kill our president, and senior officials and senior officers,” Blair said during a conference call with reporters. “It is possible without a great deal of intelligence to do something with a drone you cannot do with a high-powered rifle or driving a car full of explosives and other ways terrorists now use to try killing senior officials,” he said.
The U.S. development and growing use of armed drones has not “opened a huge Pandora’s box which will make us wish we had never invented the drone,” Blair said. But he said if drones are acquired by terrorist groups, it would force the U.S. to take defensive measures. Yet, the U.S. already has extensive surveillance of its airspace and sophisticated weapons designed against a variety of airborne threats.