From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 17:58:09 MDT
--- Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> > You cut out a lot of previous stuff, like the part where I
> specifically
> > stated that the team had individuals with FAA A&P certifications,
> with
> > at least one computer science major. Your assertion below that I
> > claimed that unskilled and untrained individuals could pull this
> off is
> > therefore unsupported and I want you to retract that.
>
> Okay. If you've originally said you need a brilliant suicide team
> with
> special-purpose hardware and lots of training (combat included)
> behind the
> belt to splice into a plane on ground and fly it essentially purely
> by
> instrument readings (have you got GPS reading on the buses, too? you
> better should, orelse you need an antenna outside the hull) I
> obviously
> misunderstood you.
I didn't say they had to be brilliant either. Your sarcasm is highly
annoying.
>
> > No, not at all. Not just theoretically possible, either. Did it,
> done
> > it, wore the t-shirt....
>
> So you entered a passenger plane with a small team, dismantled the
> panels
> (whether in flight or on ground), spliced into the copper and fiber
> (versatile Mike) avionic buses with a very portable machine people
> let you
> bring on board, cut off the cockpit and took off,
No, and now you are pushing me into pissed off mode. I was under the
impression you didn't like that side of me... :)
>
> > Furthermore, not only do all flight control and instrument data
> needed
> > to control an aircraft get wired from the cockpit to the flight
> data
> > recorder in the tail, but there are pre-wired panels on most such
> > aircraft that are generally used for troubleshooting interfaces,
> > everything from multimeter probe panels to interface connectors to
> > connect to hand held troubleshooting computers.
> >
> > No, it doesn't. I had thought that you had more practical knowledge
> of
> > circuit splicing technology, but such can be done on the fly, and
> is
>
> Yes, I know that you can't splice into a nonredundant optical bus
> (with
> standard equipment) without taking it offline for a few minutes.
The ONLY aircraft operating an optical bus at this point is the B-2
bomber, as well as some other newer military airframes needing EMP
protection.
>
> > done all the time. Phone circuitry, for example, is spliced into on
> the
> > fly, without interrupting the signal, by law enforcement doing
> > wiretaps, by hackers setting up hardwired circuit sniffers, etc.
> I've
> > spliced into aircraft circuits on-the-fly myself while I was a
> smurf.
>
> You know, given the current security atmosphere it should be easy for
> a
> person with your background to demo something like that, and cause a
> rather large splash. You should really team up with a security
> consultant, there could be money in it.
>
> > Why do you keep assuming that highly trained technicians would have
> > some aversion to death? In the 9/11 attack, the most highly trained
>
> Highly trained technicians need to be intelligent to be effective,
> and
> intelligent people have a rather good model of their mortality, and
> are
> typically more immune to memefection. As such you typically won't
> find
> highly trained technicians on suicide missions, especially a whole
> team of
> them.
>
> But you already knew that.
>
> > individuals, the pilots, were the ones who knew the most about the
> > mission. Said pilots were highly educated, financially well off,
> from
>
> You're comparing the skills of a civilian airline pilot (just to
> guide the
> plane in flight, no take off and no landing) with the rather arcane
> skill
> set of a team we described above? Mike, this is ridiculous, and you
> know it.
No, I don't. Several of the hijackers were engineers, designers, etc.
who had much skill and much to live for. It is you who are being
ridiculously narrow minded in thinking that any significant fraction of
the muslim world is going to view sacrificing one's life in the same
way as a rather secularized and rational german.
>
> > wealthy Saudi families, and pursued flight training for extended
> > periods of time to attain proficiency they felt they needed.
> >
> > Furthermore, what makes you assume that you'll be shot down before
> > reaching your target? First off, it is pathetically easy to avoid
>
> They've spent several hours on the ground in a hijacked plane
> splicing into the circuitry, then took off with pilots incommunicado,
in a
> post-9/11 world. I very much doubt they will even be allowed to take
> off.
> A couple of vehicles blocking the runway is all it takes.
There is that possibility. Then again, simply driving the aircraft into
a crowded airport terminal with tens of thousands of waiting
passengers-to-be may be all they need.... Assuming it takes several
hours to splice into the circuits is similarly unimaginative of you.
>
> > civilian radar systems by dropping below 5,000 feet altitude and
> > changing your transponder codes. They've ended round the clock
> > interceptor flights over all major cities except DC itself. The
> closest
> > fighters to New York, for example, are still at Otis AFB out on
> Cape
> > Cod.
>
> If you're in the air minutes away from your target with people barely
> starting to wake up, yawning and stretching, they could make it.
Sorry, your ignorance of military alert ops is showing (as well as your
lack of appreciation for word problems). It takes a jet aircraft on
full alert a full minute to get started, out of the hangar, taxied, and
launched to about 10,000 feet at 250 kts. In that time, the airliner
going 600 kts has already gone ten miles. Assuming the interceptor is
200 miles away (less than the real distance to Otis from New York), and
takes another five minutes to reach mach 2 (1200 mph) the airliner can
be another 50 miles away from ground zero and still beat the
interceptors. Then figure out how long it takes an F-16 at mach 2 to
reach New York from 150 miles away: seven and a half minutes. This is
how far the interceptors were from New York when the second aircraft
struck the second tower: nearly 8 minutes out.
So, for every 2 miles away from your target the interceptors are based,
you have at least a mile of distance from your target you can be in the
air. At a 200 mile range to the interceptor base, your airliner can be
in the air, 100 miles from the intended target. This makes for a rather
large list of available and reachable targets, since we still don't
have a lot of interceptors distributed around at many bases.
Once a team takes over the passenger compartment, they have 5-10
minutes to splice into the circuits while the pilots radio how they are
locked in the cockpit and the aircraft is secure... thus delaying interceptors...
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