Look at my posts and you may recall seeing the term "...yet" at the end - of course technology improves over time, and yes the right people are highly aware of this and continue to evaluate the possibility, and 'they' have not found it worthwhile...'yet'!
_TheSaint_ said:
I must disagree with some of your reasons Centurion.
1) Too time intensive to train operators
Look at 911....it took many months of flight training at a school in Florida.
First, consider ROI (Return on Investment) - the AQ spent $500,000 and 19 lives to kill 3,000 plus billions in damage; there's just not enough ROI on a toy plane that can carry only a small quantity of explosive, usually home-made with a low lethal radius. Second, you are ignoring associated points of cover story and detection, which are extreme limitations on attack capabilities.
2) High level of skill involved to hit something by remote control.
I think flying a real plane is probably harder. They did it once they can do it again.
You think? I know. Flying a real airplane is of course much harder, but flying a model airplane isnt easy either. Try and fly an actual airplane (model or 1-1 scale) under real weather conditions (which is completely unlike a computer game) to understand how tough this can be. If the weather is too severe you have to call off the attempt which would be a waste of months of planning and training, which really annoys senior planners back at HQ.
3) Small payload requires exact hit for effectiveness.
What about chemical/ biological payloads? These could be "sprayed" from the air.
Possible, but first you have to have a facility that can produce a highyl lethal chemical or biological agent in aerosol form that will remain deadly after falling 50-100 feet to the ground wthout beng blown away by wind, evaporate by sun, or diluted by rain. Ever wonder why that is done in containment units? Because one little hiss of escaping air or a drop of liquid on your skin and you are dead. Then you have to be able to transport it safely to the attack base, then you have to attach it to the plane without arming the canister, then make sure it will remotely open upon direction rather than chance. Yes its possible but the level of risk and effort isnt worth wiping out your entire attack team or CBR production staff that you spent such a long time training. Then consider how many it will effect - read up on how much chemical it takes to cover a specific area and you will see that it takes a lot more than 7 pounds of air and liquid agent to be effective, which leads back to ROI. It looks cool in a Jams Bond film (let me guess...Goldfinger?) but it is highly impractical in real life. Plus you completely ignored my comment about how radio signals can be blocked or even jammed
4) Requires 'take-off' runway of considerable length that is highly visible and within zone of security force observation.
5) Highly unusual delivery method makes for harder cover story development and higher chances of detection by security forces.
These both fall under the category of "What about Helos?" Look at this thing I can buy right now online. It won't have the payload but does have a camera... it's some weirdass helicopter for 100$ ......I want one!
Watch the videos...crazy.
Your stretching for credibility here - helos have the same problem as planes, need line of sight to control and arm, and are even more vulnerable to weather conditions and updrafts/downdrafts. Further, if it doesnt have the payload, whats your point?
In my opinion, well funded terrorists will at some point aquire some form of remotely operated plane to do some damage. All the arguments about what to use to shoot them down are mute, since as the original article says, these planes fly too low and are completely indetectible by current radar, which screens out small stuff like birds. We can either live in la la land or find some other air defense platform disigned to shoot down "little stuff" ...it should also be good for duck huntin'! At sensitive events like a G-8 summit we could deploy the new air defense platform and take out any pigeons or whatever that show up.
There are other ways to handle the situation besides trying to do something stupid like shoot it down with a missile. You watch too many movies. You should also keep up on current events - read the following:
April 11, 2005 - 6:05 PM - Israel Confirms Hizbollah Drone Entered Its Air Space
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An unmanned drone sent across theIsrael-Lebanon border by Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas was spotted over northern Israel on Monday, an Israeli militaryspokeswoman said. Israeli security sources said the small aircraft flew forseveral minutes over Israeli territory and then returned to Lebanon before Israeli aircraft could intercept it. A Hizbollah source said earlier that an "Islamic Resistancesurveillance plane Mersad 1" flew over Israel and then returnedsafely to base. "A short while ago, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) flownby the Hizbollah terrorist organization flew over westernGalilee in Israeli territory," the Israeli army spokeswomansaid. Witnesses in Lebanon said that just after Hizbollahannounced the overflight, Israeli warplanes broke the soundbarrier over the southern port city of Tyre and a nearbyPalestinian refugee camp. Hizbollah said in November it had flown a smallreconnaissance drone into Israel for the first time in responseto repeated Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace.
I didnt say it wasnt possible. I said it wasnt practical ...."YET". If Hizbollah was able to employ this is a practical manner they would already be using this to attack Israelis.
