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Drone Spotted Near JFK Airport by Pilot

sawyerloggingon

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Well first off, don't give them any effin ideas!

But actually I think hitting an airliner with an RC plane would be hard to do on purpose. It's a very fast moving target and you have to aim it in four dimensions either by sight or through what is probably a crappy video feed. (Remember we're talking radio shack grade here, not military. That, and there are a lot of eyes around the skies there, and radar. A warning to the pilot means he's got a good shot at evasion.

Far easier to just hit the terminal.
 
Oh the Conspiracy Theorists are going to have a field day with this one every time a plane crashes. Of that, you can be certain.......
 
Well first off, don't give them any effin ideas!

But actually I think hitting an airliner with an RC plane would be hard to do on purpose. It's a very fast moving target and you have to aim it in four dimensions either by sight or through what is probably a crappy video feed. (Remember we're talking radio shack grade here, not military. That, and there are a lot of eyes around the skies there, and radar. A warning to the pilot means he's got a good shot at evasion.

Far easier to just hit the terminal.


Well that and airliners throw off so much air turbulence that an RC plane would have a tough time getting close enough to begin with even under the best of conditions and they are not as pressure sensitive taking off and landing as they are in flight.
 
The assholes hijaked 4 planes on one day and nailed 3 of them into their target. That was thought of as impossible, until it happened.

All it takes is the time and money, and a mind demented enough to want to. Put nothing past them. They are not sane, but they are apparently not stupid either.
 
Geese can do it. I think air traffic is one of the reasons US remote controlled hobbyist are very tightly regulated.
Well that and airliners throw off so much air turbulence that an RC plane would have a tough time getting close enough to begin with even under the best of conditions and they are not as pressure sensitive taking off and landing as they are in flight.
 
Geese can do it. I think air traffic is one of the reasons US remote controlled hobbyist are very tightly regulated.

Geese don't have to overtake a plane. It probably is not impossible to do, but I still think it would be very difficult to do. I hope we never find out either way.
 
I know we shouldn't hope for disaster, but one of these drones bringing down a civilian aircraft would do us all a favor. The folks would sue the fardles out of the operating department to such an extent police departments would fear putting those things in the sky.
 
Maybe we could have a big helicopter crash too...get rid of all that government surveillence stuff. Like Fisher said, I hope we never find out.
I know we shouldn't hope for disaster, but one of these drones bringing down a civilian aircraft would do us all a favor. The folks would sue the fardles out of the operating department to such an extent police departments would fear putting those things in the sky.
 
You're not paranoid. There's a pretty large DIY Drone community. DIY Drones

For about 100-200 bucks you can make your own drone. Strapping explosives to it would not be hard.

Geese don't have to overtake a plane. It probably is not impossible to do, but I still think it would be very difficult to do. I hope we never find out either way.
It's truly not difficult. You can even buy kits at diydrones.com

Geese can do it. I think air traffic is one of the reasons US remote controlled hobbyist are very tightly regulated.
Tightly regulated? Not at all. You can get actually quite large with a homemade drone before it even falls under regulation. Even at that point, I don't think the terrorists care what the regulations are.
 
Well that and airliners throw off so much air turbulence that an RC plane would have a tough time getting close enough to begin with even under the best of conditions and they are not as pressure sensitive taking off and landing as they are in flight.

Head on, that wouldn't be an issue, and given the speed difference head on is the only way to do it.
 
It would be difficult to get enough explosives to do much damage on such a small remote control.
You're not paranoid. There's a pretty large DIY Drone community. DIY Drones

For about 100-200 bucks you can make your own drone. Strapping explosives to it would not be hard.
 
It would be difficult to get enough explosives to do much damage on such a small remote control.

However, not much would be required to take down an airliner.
 
It would be difficult to get enough explosives to do much damage on such a small remote control.
It doesn't take much explosives in the right place to bring down a plane. Besides, turbine based drones are not that complicated.
 
Do either of these look too small if lined with explosives to take down an airliner to anyone? Really?

2013-03-05_1622.png


2013-03-05_1622.png
 
Do either of these look too small if lined with explosives to take down an airliner to anyone? Really?

2013-03-05_1622.png


2013-03-05_1622.png

wouldnt it be more effective for them to use a drone to attack the white house or something large and stationary then to attack an airplane that you can miss?
 
wouldnt it be more effective for them to use a drone to attack the white house or something large and stationary then to attack an airplane that you can miss?

No. The chances of killing anyone important in a big ass building like the white house with such a drone would be very limited. You certainly won't be able to kill hundreds of people with it like you can an airliner. Besides, what does it matter if they miss? They go for the next plane. Airports actually have lots of them.
 
Well they got the idea now. Look for guys standing around the airport with remote controls, and good guys with shotguns looking to shoot down remote control planes.

Seriously. This is such a simplistic concept. There will be another attack. It will be simple too. That is the genius of our current enemy. They don't use high tech systems. That is our weakness. We can't think low tech anymore. That is why their intelligence systems are hard to crack.
 
Well they got the idea now. Look for guys standing around the airport with remote controls, and good guys with shotguns looking to shoot down remote control planes.

Seriously. This is such a simplistic concept. There will be another attack. It will be simple too. That is the genius of our current enemy. They don't use high tech systems. That is our weakness. We can't think low tech anymore. That is why their intelligence systems are hard to crack.

All they'd have to do is put a high power retransmitter in a car at the airport, then control it from another car a mile away. It would be impossible to track. All they have to do is drive away.

EDIT: Hell, even that is too complicated. They could just use the cellphone network to do it. They wouldn't even have to be in the country at that point.
 
The government has reactively, not proactively, tried to protect the nation against a terrorist attack by heightening security at airports.

Therefore, the next terrorist attack will use something besides planes.

Then, they'll once again act reactively.
 
No. The chances of killing anyone important in a big ass building like the white house with such a drone would be very limited. You certainly won't be able to kill hundreds of people with it like you can an airliner. Besides, what does it matter if they miss? They go for the next plane. Airports actually have lots of them.

It would show that the white house is vulnerable, heck doesnt have to be the white house $ for $ they could use them to attack airforce planes on the ground and do tons of material damage with easy to hit targets. they could even go after the presidential motorcade with one or more, that would be a fairly easy target in comparison to a plane 1 less dimension to worry about and less speed involved.
 
If a terrorist really wanted to hurt us, they don't need to be so technical. In the restaurant business, there is a term called K.I.S.S.


Keep It Simple, Stupid

Why go through all the trouble with a drone like that?

Just go the DC sniper rout. 1,500 bucks for a rust bucket mobile with a decent backseat and trunk, another grand or less for a decent hunting rifle, and some ammunition. Shoot someone completely at random...litterally close your eyes, put the finger on the map, go there, kill someone, leave, and go to the next spot. Do this for about a week, and guess what you end up with? A completely terrorized populace. Simple. Effective.

Or, if you MUST bomb something...just go around to all the propaine filling stations in each area, one night, lighting them on fire. One 3,000 gallon propane tank will take out every single building within a half mile or so. And you're in luck...all privately owned, most defended by little more than a small fence.

Or just buy a bunch of gasoline, and dump it all into the rivers, storm drains, etc.

Fact of the matter is, we're one big, giant soft target.
 
It would show that the white house is vulnerable, heck doesnt have to be the white house $ for $ they could use them to attack airforce planes on the ground and do tons of material damage with easy to hit targets. they could even go after the presidential motorcade with one or more, that would be a fairly easy target in comparison to a plane 1 less dimension to worry about and less speed involved.

They certainly could. The motorcaid idea would be a better idea, the whitehouse idea would be a waste. The terrorists aren't out to try to make the president afraid, they're out to try to make the populace afraid.
 
They certainly could. The motorcaid idea would be a better idea, the whitehouse idea would be a waste. The terrorists aren't out to try to make the president afraid, they're out to try to make the populace afraid.

And there are probably even more things they could do but no need to continue to feed ideas to nutjobs
 
I'm currently working on developing a system that uses drone helicopters with live video feeds for emergency damage assessment. The equipment is really not that expensive. Any of them that have a decent transmitting range for the video feed require a HAM license to operate as they transmit on the VHF or UHF ranges. The ones that don't require a license have range of 100 yards or less and are line of sight. It is really only a matter of time before civilians start dropping military drones out of the sky. It will require some pretty high end signal manipulation but once it happens the first time they will be dropping out of the sky in alarming numbers. For some it is strictly a matter of principle. The government is operating these drones in a manner that steps all over legal search rules. I expect some of the more ballzy operators will bring them down, reprogram them and send them back with other than pure intentions. I don't have that deep an understanding of radio frequencies and signal scrambling, we're looking more along the lines of low level ariel assessment after tornados and such. Could save a lot of time on the ground and potentially lives.
 
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