"Only anti-gun extremists and terrorist recruits are worried about armed pilots."

[unixronin]

From the Washington Times:

Only anti-gun extremists and terrorist recruits are worried about armed pilots.  So why is the Obama administration catering to this tiny lobby at the expense of public safety?

It could be just me, but I believe the writer just answered his own question.

(Via a pointer from lonewolf545)

Comments

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

I'll start off by admitting I didn't read the link.

That said, I did not that it was an editorial, which usually links in my mind to opinion piece. As has been pointed out (elsewhere? I can't recall; if desired I'll try to find the link), many newspapers take the stance that opinion pieces don't have to get their quotes or facts right, nor will the paper care if they are made up entirely.

More importantly, many specific issue poll items like this worry me as people have knee-jerk responses at best. They haven't thought it through carefully, and it's not on their list of items they care about and make it a point to follow. Why then, I would ask, should we use the poll as a significant datum on people's opinion much less reasonable policy.

(All that long-windedness complete:
a) Why would this program be so bad, I've seen nothing that makes it look ill to me?
b) Why would this program be beneficial? Pilots are responsible to their company, and terrorists taking over the body of the plane are unlikely to be foiled significantly by an armed cockpit unless they're simply recreating a known situation instead of having a new plan. Moreover once the assumption of trained terrorists is made, how many need to get on the plan to likely overwhelm a cockpit that's probably not received a great degree in tactical defense, and doesn't have a wonderful tactical position?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

a) Why would this program be so bad, I've seen nothing that makes it look ill to me?

There isn't anything bad about it, but TSA has hated the program from the start and tried several times to derail or sabotage it.

b) Why would this program be beneficial? Pilots are responsible to their company, and terrorists taking over the body of the plane are unlikely to be foiled significantly by an armed cockpit unless they're simply recreating a known situation instead of having a new plan.

If they can't take over the cockpit, they can't take control of the plane. And if they can't get into the cockpit and hole up behind the reinforced door, post-9/11 they're likely to have a damned hard time trying to take over the cabin.

Moreover once the assumption of trained terrorists is made, how many need to get on the plan to likely overwhelm a cockpit that's probably not received a great degree in tactical defense, and doesn't have a wonderful tactical position?

Oh, that's where you're wrong. It has a GREAT tactical position. The cockpit can't be enfiladed and can't be outflanked, and there's no other way in once the plane leaves the ground. It has a narrow doorway with a reinforced door, through which only one person can get at a time, against as many as three armed flightcrew (captain, copilot, engineer) inside it who only have one possible route into the cockpit that they need to cover, and the terrorists can't use automatic weapons or explosives without destroying the cockpit and preventing them from doing whatever they want to get into the cockpit for. Unless all they want to do is bring the plane down, in which case a simple bomb will probably suffice.

Neither of the above will stop them from taking the flight attendants hostage and threatening to kill or torture them until the flight crew open the cockpit door and surrender the cockpit. But post-9/11, the passengers will.

9/11 worked once. It will never work a second time. Al Qaeda knows this, and it's probably a major reason why they haven't tried. If terrorists try to take over another US aircraft in flight, the passengers will likely tear them to pieces.

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

You're last item was my point, taking over the plane is difficult & unlikely.

However, while I may well be wrong in my tactical analysis, I'm doubtful of the security of the cockpit once the body of the plane has been taken. The air supply, if naught else, is susceptible to tampering. Probably many of the flight & radio controls as well, though doing that in short time without crashing is likely beyond most groups. I'm not as certain about the difficulty in tampering with the autopilot controls, which actually run the majority of flight-time of passenger airliners.

Also, even in the post-9/11 world (and as an aside, I'm sick of that phrase) I've witnessed cockpit & crew interactions, cockpit entries, and cockpit exits. So it seems at least vaguely possible to my untrained mind that a team could subdue or overtake an aircraft body without the cockpit's awareness. From there normal interactions and a sense of complacency absent warning lead to likely failures of the security system.