SHAME ON ALL OF YOU!!

AERO-NEWS Network ^ | May 13, 2005 | Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

[LukeSW]

Aero-Views: Shame On All Of You

Fri, 13 May '05

No Heroes In ADIZ Incursion

By ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

I wasn't flying Wednesday when the city of Washington went into a massive, hyperventilating panic over a light plane in the ADIZ; I was driving the highways, and I got to hear the blow-by-blow on the radio and in periodic phone calls with ANN's Pete Combs. Good grief, what a shameful episode. There's enough shame to go around. Indeed, there are no heroes in this tawdry tale of ADIZ incursion, but there's a whole gaggle of goats:

Shame On The Security Establishment

..in the first place, for being unable to distinguish between a real threat and a bogus one. The physics of the Cessna 150 make it an improbable terror weapon. Indeed, we have an incident to show us that a Cessna 150 is not much threat to the White House. In 1994, a suicidal nutball tried to kamikaze the steel-and-concrete-reinforced landmark, and left an unsightly black smear on the wall and a divot out of the lawn -- who are we looking out for with all this panic, the groundskeepers?

A Cessna 150 does not a warplane make. But steeped in the shibboleths of relativism and egalitarian ignorance, security managers prescribe the same frantic reaction, as if it were some kind of anti-Newtonian universe: "For every action, an identical and hyperbolic overreaction."

The mighty 150 has a gross weight of 1,500 to 1,600 lbs, or about half the weight of a compact car. Even a 172 is lighter gross than the empty weight of my 1965 mustang (~2,500), which is pretty light by new-car standards. I think a typical Camry or similar vehicle is about 3,800 lb. You just can't do a lot of damage with 2,000 lbs unless it's all explosives... I know a little about blowing things up, and served for 25 years alongside the guys with the equivalent of a PhD in blowing things up, the 12BS and 18C demo men of the Army Special Forces. If we can't figure out how to destroy a big, strong building with a Cessna 150, and we can't, it's a pretty safe bet that Osama or whoever can't do it either: he puts on his baggy pants one leg at a time.

Then, there's the whole question of, "what about the building?" The White House is no stranger to hard times, having been burnt to a shell by a British raiding party on August 25, 1814 (the only surviving fixture from before 1814 is a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington which was secured by a fleeing Dolly Madison). The West Wing burned again in 1929. Yet the building endures. The walls are made of the original stone, reinforced during a 1948-52 renovation with concrete and structural steel, and light GA aircraft are not going to move them. QED. Most other public buildings in Washington are equally robust -- compare the damage and death toll at the Pentagon to that in New York. Or take a good look at the J. Edger Hoover building sometime.

Shame On Our National Leaders

...for not facing the risk (if any?) like grown men. A lot of the current security nonsense has come about because of the physical and even moral cowardice of our current crop of national leaders. If we are "a nation of laws, not of men," why are some men so demanding of special protection?

Our Government is predicated on the idea that no man is divine or irreplaceable. Our Constitution has been frequently amended to ensure that suitable procedures are in place to ensure an orderly succcession and continuity of government.

Apart from the troubling moral issues raised by special privileges for the Washington elite, there are practical issues involved in hasty and ill-advised evacuations like the one we've just seen. I've looked at several airline incidents that rose to the level of accident only when the crew made a judgment call to order an evacuation, and passengers were injured in the evacuation.

Why injure people unnecessarily, when few people are likely to be injured in the extremely unlikely event the worst-case scenario comes to pass, but some people are likely to be injured in a needless evacuation?

Shame On The News Media

I was able to hear the audio from the White House Press Room, and boy howdy, it was a pitiful display. Screaming, and yelling, and blubbering and carrying on. A most unseemly display, but then the most fitting 19th Century word for concept that's defined by the 21st Century word "metrosexual" is probably "poltroon."

The every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost stampede for the exits was unseemly, unsurprising, and, as noted above, unsafe. You are much safer staying in the building during the attack than bolting for the exit, where you might be trodden under by Helen Thomas or somebody.

I always figured most news people would be no earthly use in a crisis (real, or as in this case, imagined) and now I have my proof.

Shame On The Men In The Plane

You didn't think I was going to let these two clowns off, did you? I mean, I fly in Boston and I know about the ADIZ. My friends in Florida and California know about the ADIZ. According to a family member, the unlucky pilots knew about the ADIZ, but they blundered into it anyway.

Research in the human behavioral subset of "being lost" has shown that humans, when confused about location, will seldom if ever backtrack to the last known location and try again -- even though that method, logically, offers a good chance of success. Instead they will press on forward -- pretty much in whatever direction they happen to be pointing -- for good or for ill. The only antidote to this deeply ingrained behavior, since one can't grab his hippocampus and shake some sense into it, is to have a plan and conscious procedures for safe recovery to a known point when mislocated.

Many people will focus on the instructor, and as the more experienced pilot and authority figure, he's definitely where the buck stops. The FAA will probably recognize this with a certificate suspension or even revocation (since the violation wasn't willful, revocation would be out of line. But the security organs will want their pound of flesh). I hope the instructor subscribed to AOPAs Legal Services Plan.

But the student also deserves a share of the blame. By the time you're doing ambitious cross-countries, you need to have a baseline level of situational awareness. A student can't just ride on the instructor's ticket (even if that is how the FAA sees it, in legal terms). He holds a ticket inscribed not pilot student but student pilot -- the first is the adjective, the second the noun. Students shouldn't be constantly in their instructors' faces, but they should be willing to speak up. Many an airliner has come to grief because a doubting FO held his tongue. If there was ever a place to indulge in bumper sticker behavior, the cockpit is where you "Speak truth to power" and "Question Authority."

These two men had a very unpleasant day, and they have more hard times ahead. But they were lucky; they very nearly died. If the fighter pilots had been what the Air Force calls "fangs out", this whole story would be ten times worse. The 150 pilots will live to fly again -- and one hopes, to enjoy flight again.

One Organization Reacted Credibly

After all this ranting, I ought to close on a positive note -- and there is one to be found. Despite all the things that COULD have gone wrong, the air defense organization reacted with as much restraint as alacrity. If the military and DHS intercept crews hadn't been at the top of their game, if the controllers hadn't been alert, God alone knows what might have happened. These disciplined men and women are trapped in a bad system that's not of their making, but they still performed like a symphony orchestra with Beethoven Himself conducting.

[OldFriend]

Imagine the media rant if they noticed a plane flying inside the NO FLY ZONE with no reaction at all.

Am sick of all the second guessers.

I suppose we can say that since hundreds of thousands of planes have flown over NY, PA, and D.C. without incident, then there will be NO incident in the future.

Kind of like the Michael Jackson defense. Look at all the boys he didn't molest, therefore......

[cynicom]

Olde...Your usual thinking cap is missing today.

[Strategerist]

and if the Cessna is carrying a fresh nuclear weapon from North Korea (or soon Iran)...

Actually one at the state of development of both nations would be too heavy for this aircraft.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

This is a Cessna 150

A suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb is a very compact and portable nuclear weapon and could have the dimensions of 60 x 40 x 20 centimeters or 24 x 16 x 8 inches. The smallest possible bomb-like object would be a single critical mass of plutonium (or U-233) at maximum density under normal conditions.

The Pu-239 weighs 10.5 kg and is 10.1 cm across. It doesn't take much more than a single critical mass to cause significant explosions ranging from 10-20 tons. These types of weapons can also be as big as two footlockers.

The physics of the Cessna 150 make it an improbable terror weapon. Indeed, we have an incident to show us that a Cessna 150 is not much threat to the White House.

A Cessna 150 does not a warplane make.

A Cessna 150 waould make a dangerous warplane indeed .

Government Alert: Hospital Security Breach

Filed under:

• All News Briefs

— admin @ 7:08 am

This really has federal authorities puzzled - intruders masquerading as doctors and inspectors probing hospital security. But there is no evidence the cases are connected, including two in New Jersey. Hospital officials and security experts say the similarities are disturbing.

It happened on Easter Sunday. Three men of middle-eastern descent entered a Sussex County hospital posing as physicians.

Read Article

Watch For Impostors, Homeland Security Warns City Hospitals

Filed under:

• All News Briefs

— admin @ 6:00 am

New York City hospitals are on the lookout for impostors trying to scope out health-care facilities and locate radioactive materials following warnings late last month from the Department of Homeland Security and the city Police Department about an emerging pattern of “suspicious incidents” in some American cities.

Read Article

Stowaway on American nuke-powered aircraft carrier

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• All News Briefs

— admin @ 6:53 pm

A Newport man who boarded an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier anchored in The Solent has been made subject to an anti-social behaviour order and banned from named sensitive areas.

Abdoul Masmoud Yessoufou, 37, whose address was given at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday as East Street, Newport, admitted entering a prohibited area at Portsmouth Docks.
The court was told that Yessoufou was found on the USS Harry S. Truman at the weekend after he strolled past guards and hitched a ride out to the carrier on a boat used by sailors on runs ashore.

Yessoufou had previously appeared before Uxbridge Magistrates three times this year for entering restricted zones at Heathrow. He also reached the side of an aircraft at Southampton Airport in January.

Read Article

[Strategerist]

As has been repeatedly pointed out by many posters your odds of getting a nuke closer to the center of DC are infinitely better with a car or truck than an aircraft.

[An.American.Expatriate]

Well, gee, okay. Some crack pot self-appointed security expert apparently knows more about defending the capitol in time of war against threats than the Pentagon.

Move over Rummy.

The idiots flying the Cessna refused to acknowledge and had no transponder. They continued to fly into the ADIZ - even though they KNEW of it's presence. Only a complete a**wipe would be unable to recognize BY SIGHT that they were flying into DC Airspace and NOT realize that, gee, maybe we should turn back!

The author (and to be fair, many others as well) simply ASSUMES that the WH was the target. Based on what evidence?? I can think of a great many targets within the DC Metro Area which would be quite lucrative around noon on a nice spring day - none of which is "hardened".

BUT - this JERK starts his diatribe by denouncing the very people charged with protecting US!

Review the history of terrorism sometime Mr Omniscient Pilot. Seldom if ever are "buildings" themselves the target. It is almost ALWAYS the people who are the target. If a symbolic building CAN be targeted at the same time, so much the better (for the terrorist) but the place is secondary to the people present there!!

I will agree that the reactions of some of the security forces was a bit extreme (in hindsight) - but consider - most likely the ONLY word these people received was "a plane is approaching", not "a single engine Cessna 150, an improbable terrorist weapon, weighing a mere 1,500 lbs is approaching".

It is attitudes like YOURS which does more to endanger the safety of US Citizens than an occasional "false alarm".

No one was harmed by the precautions taken, unless you count some soiled undies as harm. Many COULD have been harmed had the precautions not been taken and the incident had been "real".

No sir, SHAME ON YOU!

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

The point is even at 4 miles a nuke would still be a dangerous thing to go off in a Cessna to make out like it would not be dangerous as a weapon is ridiculous at best.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Simply shooting the plane down would prevent the appearance of panic, if image is so darned important.

[LIConFem]

Dear Mr. O'Brien:

You have no idea what kind of threat that plane might have posed, regardless of its size, weight and capacity. Would you rather have it crash onto a busy D.C. street killing a few innocent people, or treat it as a possible threat and save those peoples' lives? And, as others in this thread have pointed out, could it not have have been carrying biological agents of some kind, and could those agents have been fairly efficiently dispersed from the air? And lastly, would you rather we not treat such incursions as threats thus paving the way for some enterprising terrorist to use a light single-engine plane to kill innocent people in our nations capitol?

Thanks for listening...

Frikkin' idiot...

[backhoe]

I think there's still a picture of the Davy Crockett miniature nuke here:

Tiny Nukes-- the backpack threat

The smallest US nukes ever made had yields on the order of 0.02 kilotons:

[muawiyah]

You are mistaken. We had tractor trailers hauling away stuff known to be contaminated with Anthrax at the Brentwood facility (within hours of the discovery that it was contaminated).

The trucks did not spread the material, or if they did, the local airflow around the trucks was insufficient to provide a satisfactory aerosol effect.

A light plane could readily cover a vast area with Anthrax spores due to it's speed and altitude.

I don't understand why you are so impatient to "disprove" the idea that Anthrax can be spread in an aerosol form.

[thathamiltonwoman]

I'm sick of this. Washington DC DID NOT go in a panic mode. I was in DC and outside of the capitol building nobody went anywhere. In fact, I was outside for lunch at the time and the streets were no busier than usual and I'm only 4 blocks from the White House. Don't believe everything you hear on TV.

[frankiep]

Excellent post!

I can't believe that some people here either don't understand that we are at war or think that this country doesn't have enemies that would try something like this. How could anyone in their right mind see all the stuff going on in the world today such as suicide bombers walking into crowded public places, daily car bombs in Iraq, guys trying to blow up commercial jets with a shoe, anthrax being sent through the mail, etc., and think that an unresponsive plane flying in a NO FLY ZONE towards the White House and Capitol is no biggie? Unbelievable.

[Jeff Gordon]

What we have here is a pilot acting with typical pilot hubris. He is simply taking the opportunity to say that he is not as stupid, bad or uncoordinated then some other pilot. I'll bet the author can actually walk and chew gun at the same time.

God knows, a guy that flys is taking his (and other) life into his own hands. He sure as hell better believe in himself. The risk comes when the hubris makes the pilot bold, thus increasing his chances of not becoming old.

[cynicom]

Perhaps a few here are using rational thinking, this includes weighing the laws of probability and coming to a different conclusion.

I suspect cooler heads did IN FACT weigh the probability and negate any shooting down. I give them credit for this as it is their job and they made the right decision.

Black and white shootdown policy should never be adopted. Sane, cool, trained minds, must evaluate first, not react without thought.

[Americanexpat]

"Stopped reading after this..."

Me too. The guy is a dumb**s. I may not be an explosives expert, and don't claim to be one. But if you load 100 - 300 pounds of explosives into an airplane and crash it into a building, or the white house, your going to cause damage and death or injury. And if you don't, your still going to cause major embarrassment to the government.

The same people who WOO HAW this incident would be crying for blood then. There was an infiltration into the air space around the capital and decisions were made without a lot of time to spare, they may not have been the right ones, but they were made.

I agree with most here that these two yahhoos were not a threat and glad they were not shot down, but what of next time.

[Netizen]

How much anthrax can a Cessna 150 carry?

How much anthrax would be needed to create a problem? Isn't it a gaggle of geese and a herd of goats?

[An American Patriot]

”HEY, MR. “AUTHORITY,” CHECK THIS OUT!!

RESOURCE CENTER—National Terror Alert (NTARC)

http://www.nationalterroralert.com/readyguide/suitcasenuke.htm

A suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb is a very compact and portable nuclear weapon and could have the dimensions of 60 x 40 x 20 centimeters or 24 x 16 x 8 inches. The smallest possible bomb-like object would be a single critical mass of plutonium (or U-233) at maximum density under normal conditions.

The Pu-239 weighs 10.5 kg and is 10.1 cm across. It doesn't take much more than a single critical mass to cause significant explosions ranging from 10-20 tons. These types of weapons can also be as big as two footlockers.

The warhead of a suitcase nuke or suitcase bomb consists of a tube with two pieces of uranium, which, when rammed together, would cause a blast. Some sort of firing unit and a device that would need to be decoded to cause detonation may be included in the "suitcase."

Another portable weapon is a "backpack" bomb. The Soviet nuclear backpack system was made in the 1960s for use against NATO targets in time of war and consists of three "coffee can-sized" aluminum canisters in a bag. All three must be connected to make a single unit in order to explode. The detonator is about 6 inches long. It has a 3-to-5 kiloton yield, depending on the efficiency of the explosion. It's kept powered during storage by a battery line connected to the canisters.

And I loved this one: "You just can't do a lot of damage with 2,000 lbs unless it's all explosives.”

DUH!!! Give this wing-nut a cigar, please.

What do you think, that someone bent of wreaking havoc and decimation would have loaded in a plane Mr. “Know-it-all,” daisies or marshmallows?

Give me a break!

I’m not a pilot (though I worked on planes—big mothers—for 3 years while in the AF) and likewise, I am not an expert on explosives, though I did see the results of a single 500 lb bomb while in Nam—not very pretty.

Wonder what our genius Luke (who BTW, seems to have disappeared) would have to opine about the [probable] results of a Cessna loaded with 1500 lbs of Semtex traveling at the rate of speed of (oh, say maybe 150 knots in a sharp dive) and impacting a building? Might make for a pretty big bang?

[auboy]

I heard (in one report) that the pilots were not on instruments, but were flying by sight. I have a question for those of you who are pilots, especially small plane pilots. How many cities between Eastern PA and NC look like Washington, DC from the air?

I have flown over DC and looked down (in a commercial jet) and Washington's distinct circular design was very apparent. Of course, my view was from a higher altitude than most small planes fly, I would imagine. I just find it hard to believe one could not recognize DC in the distance, especially on a clear day.

[frankiep]

What is there to think about? We know that terrorist organizations are targeting this country. We know that they are quite adept at coming up new and innovative ways to strike. We know that there is a very real threat of a small amount of a substance like anthrax or ricin being sprayed over densely populated areas from small planes. We know that that the area of the White House and Capitol is a particularly big target. We know that there is a NO FLY ZONE that begins 15 miles outside of this area. We know that the plane was not responding to calls to divert it's course and got to within 3 miles of the White House.

Frankly, I find it absolutely amazing that we know all of this stuff and the idiots in the plane were able to get out of the situation with their lives. Good for them, but had they been shot down I would not have been surprised nor would I have had a problem with it.