Slashdot Mirror
Protecting Cities from Hijacked Planes
Kong99 writes "A group at UC-Berkeley has proposed Soft Walls to stop hijacked planes from entering a protected airspace. Interesting read especially since they claim it is 'hack' proof."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
This is a really cool idea. I'm all for it.
Just one concern...what's to stop the hijackers from busting the autopilot controls in the cockpit? I would think that it would be sensitive to bullets or repeated bashing. It's not like you need an autopilot when you're right next to a city, just point the nose and go. What kind of range should these no fly zones have, and what should be protocol for when an airport is in/next to a city?
Even if this process is hack-proof (yet to be seen), anything that forcibly takes control away from the pilot is going to be dangerous. What if the only way to avoid a mid-air collision is to bank into one of these "soft walls"?
Phoenix
Never claim anything is hack-proof if you don't want to get hacked.
Especially do not claim that safety-critical systems are hack-proof, since even people who wouldn't normally try to hack them will try.
It's like security through obscurity- in this case more like security through non-boasting. The same thing applies- it doesn't really make you more secure, but it stops a lot of people from trying.
graspee
The twin tower attack was a one-time thing; neither it nor anything like it will ever work again, especially after all the media attention and tactical commentary the attack received.
This is a solution to a problem which will never come up again in anything near the form it did. It's interesting to think about and expand our engineering knowhow with but it's worthless as a Real Solution to a Real Problem.
Because the system is not dependant on ground input.
So I suppose there was nobody in those 4 planes...
Gog
Peace in the middle east would also solve a good portion of the problem (from an engineering perspective) and it doesn't cost millions of dollars. AND it is immune to hacking.
-n
Plane tries hard to fly into zone but soft walls keep it out
I'm sold!
-Lucas
They propose modifying the avionics in aircraft so that the plane would fight any efforts by the pilot to fly into restricted airspace
Somehow this makes me feel a little less safe. I know that so much of flying is electronically controlled now anyway, with autopilot and more, but the there still is the ability for the pilot to actively fly the plane if it becomes necessary, without the plane "fighting" him or here.
What if the terrorist attack came in a different way, and the pilot had to make "evasive maneuvors" (sp!) or something?
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
So if a plane was flying with a no-fly-zone to he left, and the pilot started banking left to enter the zone, the avionics would counter by banking right. Lee's system, called "soft walls", would first gently resist the pilot, and then become increasingly forceful until it prevailed.
I can't say I like the idea of a computer having the final say over the direction of an airplane. Even if the intentions are good, pilots need to have the final say. Even Air Traffic Control can't force a maneuver on a pilot, if he or she thinks it is not safe.
In other words: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you fly there.
I thought this was solved by NOT allowing curbside luggage check-in.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The system would include an on-board database of the GPS coordinates of the no-fly zones. If it sensed an attempt to jam GPS signals it would switch to other navigation aids such as airport beacons. Being independent of ground control means soft walls would be immune to hacking
Wishful thinking or willful ignorance?
The database would have to be updated prior to each flight, because the zones would have to be flexible. Points of entry are the main database at each airport, the central database at some government facility, and of course every single aircraft participating in this. Factor in the execptions you know the congresscritters cannot avoid putting into any sort of regulatory legislation, like exemptions from participation from non-commercial planes of a certain size or smaller, and you have a system so full of holes that it would hardly be worth the cost.
In other news, shipmakers have launched a new 'un-sinkable' ship today, and dubbed her 'The Titanic'...more to come...
-- p06 "On religious wars: They're essentially wars over whoo's imaginary friend is better"
There is NO such thing as a hack proof system. ...
There is NO such thing as a hack proof system.
There is NO such thing as a
Okay, the one possible exception is when the BRS is turned to OFF. It doesn't exist now and it never will. In fact, I would say that the fact that it is NOT ground-based makes it even MORE vulnerable. After all, get the plane in the sky, then commence with the hacking, right?
My journal has hot
...claiming something is "hack-proof", or claiming that something like the 9/11 attacks will never happen again.
The reality is that people are [still] regularly getting contraband through security checkpoints. Great, there are bars on the cockpit doors now, but I'm not willing to bet thousands of lives on that alone.
I personally doubt anyone will TRY this type of attack in the near future, but to claim it will never work again seems pretty bold.
I can just see it now... "I can't let you do that Dave"
Hmm... Suppose that a plane were somehow to take off with a database of no-fly zones that listed all of the airports within a 1000-mile radius of its destination? Suppose that an updated database is released that accidentally puts O'Hare in a no-fly zone, and it isn't discovered until planes start colliding with each other over Chicago? And what can be done to save a plane that has a corrupted database once it takes off? From the story, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! You're doomed, see ya later.
Nice system. I'll walk, thanks.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Think like a terrorist for a second, will you.
So what if you can't slam a plane into a building? Your only limits are your creativity.
If the airplane's softwall control can't be hacked, then perhaps the terorrists can make planes crash into things by guiding them with `pirate soft walls'. Or just making planes crash. I don't think terorriats are lla that picky and choosy.
This is dumb.
When will American politics wake up and address the injustices that are the real root of the terrorist problem?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
1. Hijack plane.
2. Fly towards "softwall".
3. Kill power on plane (method not discussed in the interest of Homeland Security).
4. Can the "softwall" stop an unpowered (hence uncontrolled) plane (now a ballistic object)?
How about we just get the Gungan's to build us city shields? They were pretty...
yes, I read the article
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
Left, right, left, right, up, down, up, down, left pedal, right pedal, barrel roll left, hit the autopilot button, and BLAMMO, the names of the dev team are scrolling over the inflight movie.
Sounds like a recipe for air sickness bag sales!
--
My other computer is your IIS server.
Airport security has been stepped up to the point where you can't fart without getting a cavity search. The passengers nowadays will fight a hijacker, and everyone will be on high alert if a plane veers off course. I don't think that having someone crash a plane into a football stadium is going to happen because we're now expecting it. Just like with 9/11 if somebody's going to do a massive attack on civilians it's going to be in a way that nobody expects. All the security checkpoints and super high tech crap in the world won't stop someone who really wants to do damage at a target. They'll find your greatest weakness and strike it when you last expect it to happen. All this soft wall BS is a little something extra to make Joe Sixpack feel safe so he can continue drooling all over himself. (Mod me as a troll, but it really is true.)
The devil you say! Those darn whiny pilots and their "control" and their "not dying in screaming terror because their controls have beem r00t3d"!
Great idea until someone needs to make an emergency landing on a C.D. Highway (Many Highways were required by law to have a certain amount of space that could be used as a landing strip) only to find the "Soft Wall" directs them into the orphanage next to the greyhound station where 2,000 nuns are loading up for their trip the the annual "Sisters of Mercy and free medical care division" convention.
And let's not get started on what being inside a "soft Wall" would do to properly values, and what being in the likely "Tried to hit the soft wall but ended up here" zone would do to the value of your property.
And who wants to be a whole slew of the wealthy will ante up to get their homes listed as being in a "Soft Wall"
And what about an out of date "Soft Wall" database that prevents a small plane from landing in a newly constructed airport?
And what about the manual override? There's ALWAYS a manual override. Just ask Riff.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
If I were a pilot, I would certainly not feel safe knowing that the plane will prevent me from entering certain airspace beyond my control. It's all well and good in theory... until the shit hits the fan.
Aside from the obvious risk of software problems (why is the plane trying to veer into that mountain?!) there's also the risk of unpredictable circumstances. What happens if some freaky weather condition needs we need to divert the flight path over a city to evade it etc.? Of course, the answer is to include an 'off' switch but then this defeats the whole point.
Also if it relies on GPS, would it not be possible to just jam the positioning signal from within the plane?
A clever(ish) idea but like a lot of ideas, just too impractical.
While this technology is theoretically interesting, it won't save the victims of the 9/11 FTC disaster. And the terrorists have been subdued--you only have to turn on CNN and see that Iraq is now safely under American (to say nothing of Christian) control.
That sounds about as much fun as the ejection systems for tactical helicopters that were brainstormed back in the day (and keep getting revived for some stupid reason).
One was explosives around the rotor head that blew when you pulled the ejection handle, making the blades fly off before you blasted through the plane of the rotor disk. Not many folks really trusted the sequencing to work right when needed. I have heard of a syncronized system theory too, but I think the blades move too fast through the plane to give a seat time to clear the gap between them (unless you want to eject at MACH 69 and that does not do the body of the Aviator much good).
The other was a "through the floor" ejection. Great theory when you are not between 5' and 200' AGL. Unfortunately, tactical aircraft live between those altitudes a vast majority of the time, especially at the times they would be shot down.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
It's just yet more knee-jerk reaction by people who get a warm fuzzy feeling from pretending they're doing something useful, when in reality they are just wasting time money and effort.
The only thing that's not hack-proof is a system that's turned off, or broken too badly to run properly anyway. And maybe not even then.
And a missile can blow up a plane too. The terrorists on 9/11 were working with box cutters.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
That doesn't apply to all muslims, specific sects - yes, but certainly not all. Also remember, muslim does not equal middle east, the religion is global.
True, the hydrolics would work, but how would they be controlled? The EMP would ruin the electronics that read the yoke and pedal positions. You wind up with a dead stick plane.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
...a group at Bellevue has planned soft walls for anybody crazy enough to believe something "can't be hacked".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Article not read, huh? :p
:p
There is no ground link required for this. The "SoftWalls" are defined by GPS data stored into the planes computer. So it's not like you can aim your pringles can in the air at LAX and "create" a SoftWall.
The only way to "create" a wall would be to upload it to the plane(s). That's where their "hack proof" claim comes in... THAT is a whole new topic
Cheers,
André
They could even allow planes to be hijacked from the ground if terrorists managed to take over air-traffic control sites.
Well, duh, if it works by radio, people will listen to it and figure out how to take control. If some big dumb company like Microsoft makes it, there will be a buffer overflow in some unnecessary chunk that gives complete control of the flight control system. I imagine a scenerio where a terrorist sends the "air-clippy" a specially crafted message that either renders the controls inoperable or gives control to terroist on the ground. Ha ha is not very funny in the air.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Just finished a technothriller (hey, even brain cells need a rest!) by R.J. Pineiro, called "CyberTerror". One of the main plot elements involved hacking the maintenance database at Boeing, such that malware was stealthily distributed with the auto apdate feature of the maintenance computers in the field. The result was a plane which crashed into a city, having completely over-ridden human control. I agree with the article that fly-by-wire technology is a two-edged sword, but ISTM the hack-protection needs to be at a deeper level in the system as well as just in the cockpit.
The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. -- William Gibson
A little box on every plane with GPS co-ordinates of prime terrorism targets? Seems like a wealth of valuable info for some loon with a couple of ICBMs to spare.
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
The odds of these things are low
But I'd bet good money the odds are much lower of a hijacker trying to use the plane as a missile.
Let's be blunt, planes are not used as massive suicide bombs on a regular basis. I don't know the stats, but I suspect a system like this would cause more problems than it was worth.
Everyone is raising all sorts of examples of situations where having a "Soft Wall" would be a very bad thing, and would cost lives.
I suspect Boeing is going along with this either because of a PHB who can't see past the end of his nose, or because they know it is too dangerous to implement but have to investigate it anyway for political reasons.
That or the article's claims of Boeing's involvement are overstated, inflated and limited to "They sold us some specs that are avaialbe to the general public."
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
> enter room
This could be dangerous. Are you sure?
> Y
Are you REALLY sure?
> Y
Are you REALLY, REALLY sure?
> Y
I could tell you weren't really sure. You turn around and walk away. Telegrams from all over the galaxy arrive praising your prudence...
Autopilot: "I could tell you didn't really want to avoid that oncoming jumbo jet by turning left into a no-fly zone. Have a nice afterlife..."
For the same reason Airbus removed certain features from it's autopilot. At an air show in France Airbus was demonstrating their new autopilt system which overrides pilot control, to supposedly keep him from crashing, and lands the plane safely. During the demonstration, the plane misread the runway and overrode the pilto crash into a stand of trees. I feel much more safe with a human at the controls, than a computer (insert windows bashing here).
So explain to me how a plane is supposed to land in washington DC or San Jose, ca.
Both airports are embeded in protected airspace. This whole system seems very over simplistic.
This is a terrible idea for many reasons.
First, most cities are not "restricted airspace". There are no prohibitions against flying over all kinds of areas where just as much damage could be done as happened on 9/11. And in fact, you can't protect cities in this way, because they tend to put airports near cities. So this proposal fails to achieve its most basic security goal.
In fact, most restricted airspace is over isolated areas and is used for military training. It is restricted only so that combat pilots don't have to worry about accidentally ramming into jetliners.
Second, these days one of the main forms of security related restricted airspace is the Temporary Flight Restriction, TFR. This follows the president all over the country as he campaigns for the 2004 elections. But since the locations of the TFRs change daily and unpredictably, there would be no reliable way for the avionics to be loaded with the current TFR locations. Hence the proposal would fail to address one of the main current security concerns.
Third, there are significant safety issues involved. Every system is prone to failure. What happens when the gadget mistakenly activates and starts trying to turn the plane? The pilot will be fighting with the controls at a time when he may be distracted trying to land in bad weather. The system could easily kill many more people than it would save.
And fourth, there are occasions when there is a legitimate need to enter restricted airspace, such as during an emergency. A dumb gadget like this cannot be expected to understand that an engine is failing or that the control surfaces are damaged, and the pilot needs to get the plane on the ground pronto! Military bases, with their ultra-long runways and isolation from civilians, are ideal locations for emergency landings; but they are generally in restricted airspace. Again, imagine the scenario of trying to land a crippled airliner while battling a robot which insists that you don't have the right to land there!
All in all this is such a bad idea that it's clear that no one involved has any experience with the aviation business and what the real security issues are.
Ding ding ding! Thank you. One need look only as far as the Airbus A-320 that crashed at an airshow while doing a low fly-by; the computer prevented the pilot from increasing power to the engines, and the plane mowed a 200 foot wide swath through the forest and exploded in flames.
Several people were killed,and the pilot was scapegoated by Airbus; they claimed he was flying at 30 feet, not 70- that he had switched off the computer systems, etc. The flight recorder was removed by an AIRBUS EMPLOYEE from the crash scene(there's news footage of him carrying the box away!) and the box disappeared for a day or two. It was then mysteriously returned to the French police...and guess what? There was a large gap in the flight recorder's data, and it showed rather incriminating evidence(for the pilot.)
Please help metamoderate.
Basically what I'm saying is...if the pilot purposefully loses control of the plane towards the right direction, can the "soft wall" system regain control? I'd say probably not, and it sounds like this doesn't help any problem whatsoever, and it certainly creates some:
I can see a pilot maneuvering around a big city, getting in line to land...accidentally he starts to move towards the "soft wall"...the system forces him to return, right in the area where there are other airplanes. That sounds like a traffic control nightmare, one more thing for those poor guys to be aware of, one more thing to give them ulcers.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Uhm... so what's preventing someone from taking a baseball bat or some coffee to the system? If the autopilot system is out of comission, it simply can't work...
Sure, if you don't mind the plane crashing immediately after you do this, that's a great idea.
You can't fly a modern passenger jet without electronics. End of story.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Comatose passengers aren't likely to hijack a plane... Especially if they're isolated from the flight crew.
The way they did it in the 5th Element is the way to go...
/sig
Got a few facts wrong, I just realized. Here's a good article with the facts of the case; it was a combination of throttle malfunction at low altitude, and improper altitude display. http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af 296.shtml
Please help metamoderate.
To me it sounds like all you'd need to do is hack the computer system of the plane. Could it stop people? Yes, but it will just force terrorists to be more high tech. Plus, it would require updating every plane's software when the no fly zones changed. If the system is easy to update then it will probably be easy to alter maliciously.
-EndBabble
It's not going to happen again. The reason why three of the the four hijacked planes hit the attackers' targets is this: no one on the planes, not the pilots, not the passengers, not the attendents, had an inkling that the hijackers were intent on crashing the planes. It had never happened before.
Standard procedure for a hijacking is to cooperate with the hijackers to minimize harm to the people on the plane.
If the people on a hijacked plane know that they are on a doomed aircraft, the attackers have no leverage. The Pennsylvania flight was different from the other three in that the passengers ignored the-plane-will-crash-if-we-use-cellphones rule, called their families, got the lowdown, and then attacked the terrorists. The terrorists lost. The mission failed.
Mr. Shoe-Bomb also failed because the passengers gang-beat his ass. Mission failed.
Every plane hijacked in the future will have passengers that will not cooperate. The pilots won't cooperate. Missions to use airliners as bombs are now useless: any sane attacker will of course now use other methods.
Creating softwalls and turning our country into a AA-covered bunker is idiotic. Attacks via planes can't succeed. At the very least, the pilots will slam the plane into a field to save the lives of thousands.
I worry at the irrationality of the actions of the people of the U.S. Shutdown of the Constitution. Illegal attacks against non-threatening countries. Concentration camp in Cuba, complete with execution chamber (coming soon). Cameras everywhere. Reading everyone's mail.
You know, the attackers communicated face-to-face, so NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE STOPPED THEM.
We're turning the U.S. into an prison populated by people constantly agitated by their warden into a state of hysterical paranoia.
Listen, the people who really, really wanted to blow us up died in the planes. They are dead. They aren't in Iraq. They aren't everyone who speaks Arabic. They aren't being tortured in little white jail cells across the U.S.
Any future attack will come from a different front. And frankly, these men aren't that bright: they're cultists to begin with, so 9/10 of their brain cells are useless anyway.
The few loonies who want to attack us will do so no matter how many cameras are over our beds. Now, on the other hand, by attacking non-combatants all over the world, Bush Inc. has converted infinite good will into an implacable wall of resistance, not because of what we are, or the insanity of our enemies, but because of what we have done to people who had nothing to do with the 911 attackers. 2,000-10,000 dead in Iraq: Perle and Wolfowitz refuse to give an accounting. Bush has insulted and alienated the entire world when previously he had them firmly on our side. He's like John Adams wandering into Paris in the 1770's, who insulted and patronized the very people Franklin had so carefully cultivated into supporting the U.S. Adams, like Bush, nearly lost the war by his gross incompentency in diplomacy, his raw moral fanaticism, his ignorance of other nation's cultures, and his blind nationalism.
Soft walls won't save us from Bush's stupidlity in dealing with, well, ANYTHING.
Yeah, white Christians are way better than that!
No way white Christians would ever launch a brutal armed campaign, kill millions of middle easterners, burn their homes and libraries and loot their cultural treasures, thereby setting their society back by thousands of years, all in the name of the Christian God and his holy book! I mean, white Christians wouldn't even think of such a...
Oh, wait...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Nope, sorry. In a fly-by-wire plane there are no mechanical links to the control surfaces. If the flight control computer completely dies, you have absolutely no control over the plane.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Brainstormed back in the day? The Russians built it, and it does work.
There are several reasons why this is a bad idea:
1. Most large metropolitan airports are in or near areas where these 'softwalls' would be deployed. Take a look at the restrictions placed on takeoff and landings from Washington International (you basically have to fly down the Patomac River and make a hard left on short final to avoid restricted airspace over the White House and Congress. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want an autopilot to take control of the aircraft on short final if it didn't like my flight path. On takeoff - from the south - you have to similarly make a hard left turn barely wheels-up).
Putting this into effect would leave very little leeway for situations where the aircraft can not meet the minimum flight parameters (climb rate not up to snuff due to engine failure, damage to a control surface that prevents a turn at the proper rate to miss the restricted area, etc...) What was an emergency will become a disaster if control is removed from the pilot.
2. Legally a pilot is responsible for the safety of the flight. Many times the cause of accidents can be traced to pilot error. With this system in place, every accident near a restricted zone would raise questions - to what degree did the pilot and the autopilot contribute to the accident? This would be a legal can of worms (the cost of which would be born by the traveling public).
3. Who would certify that these systems are infallable without pilot control? If a pilot can not 'hack' the system - i.e. turn it off, then it had better be perfectly safe, as per FAA standards for other avionics. Avionics and flight instruments are designed to allow redundancy in the form of multiple backup systems - if one breaks, the pilot is trained to use backup systems to correlate the data lost from the main indicator. Unfortunately, since a pilot is prohibited from interacting with this system - how would we be 100% sure that the system would function under all conditions?
History has shown too many times that misapprehension of a technology's limitations often leads to disaster - the Titanic comes to mind. Until we can certify that a computer can function with uncertain and incomplete information effectively under all conditions (currently humans are the only ones that can do this satisfactorily), then I would not want to stake my life on this technology.
I am both a pilot and a software developer, having the hubris to think I have insight into this problem.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Well, that's already covered by the current policies.
As it stands, (and this is pre attack on two towers) the door is ment to be locked. If anyone is held hostage, they are expendable until, and unless, the plane is safely landed.
That stands.
However, note that the pilots are in communication with air traffic control. The ability to communicate is powerful, but it also works to help the pilots. Put them on to an anti-terrorist specialist (as is, and has been, in the procedure for several years), and book an appointment with a counseller for the pilots.
The point of the 'no door' is to refuse the pilots options that will cause more harm. It's harsh, but you're dealing with people who are prepared to kill.
The Islamic terrorists don't attack because we treat them like trash (which we really don't). They attack because we aren't muslims. Simple as that.
Yes, there are. The whole range of Airbus planes (except for the A300/A310 series) are as fly-by-wire as can be. Joysticks in the cockpit, no linkage between the pilot and the wings.
;-)
These planes do not request from their pilots to manipulate the moving surfaces in such a way as to obtain the desired attitude of the plane, they just need input as to what the attitude should be and then move the plane like that. Rather like a computer game, really.
The most visible advantage of this is that the pilot cannot 'stall' the airplane. The airplane will not put itself in a situation where it would stop flying. One simply cannot 'pull up' or deccelerate so much that the airplane would crash. Quite amazing technology, an entirely not Microsoft powered.
This story is about researchers from the University of California at Berkeley (a.k.a. U.C. Berkeley or Cal), not the University of Berkley.
You could always leave slashdot, there may be better websites for you.
Many people, probably many slashdot readers, understand that most muslims are peace loving and have no interest in killing us. There are people there who hate us, just like you've shown there are people here who hate them. It's usually the ones who know nothing about one another that choose to hate.
But I guess not wanting to commit genocide of a race is anti-American and too liberal for you, so I'll end my post here.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
Third of all, how many space shuttle flights have there been in the last 10 years? And how many commercial airplane flights have there been in the last 10 years? How many people are monitoring the Space Shuttle flying? How many people are monitoring the average commercial airplane flying? Don't compare apples and oranges.
Oh and I almost forgot: you mention that the autopilot in Columbia _can_ be disabled. The autopilot mentioned here _cannot_ be disabled. Slight difference. Nothing worth mentioning. Until you need to disable it.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
No where in the article does it mention Mulims ... perhaps you shouldn't assume that all terrorists are Muslim? That also would be a good start :)
" The Islamic terrorists don't attack because we treat them like trash (which we really don't). They attack because we aren't muslims. Simple as that."
Like most simple ideas about peoples motives, thats almost entirely wrong. There are lots of reasons, one of the primary being the presence of US soldiers in their holy land.
Lebenon was a democracy that we helped destroy as well. With the success rate of american policy in the middle east, I'm amazed they don't just wise up and stop messing around. Americans know nothing about arab civilizations. They shouldn't bother.
I play Nerd-Folk!
If this is true, it must mean that all countries except USA and Israel are muslim, since those are almost exclusively the ones targeted by islamic terrorists.
Do you really believe that?
they're not muslims any more than david koresh was a christian.
they're taking advantage of impressionable, desperate people in a bleak situation. similar to the catholic cults in africa - but with greater resources.
total fuckwits - but they're not representative of 'muslims' in general.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The point is not necessarily in the ability to control the plane's direction after the EMP goes off, but before. Think parabolic arc (or something close enough to it). Set the course, speed, and right before the wall, kill all electrical systems. The plane coasts through the soft wall and into Joe's Bistro on the 14th floor of the Plaza Building.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
The reason 9/11 happened in the first place was because pilots and passengers had always been taught to cooperate with terrorists under the assumption that the terrorists will land the plane somewhere and make demands. Once it was shown that hijackers will pilot planes into buildings (an attack unheard even by 'experts'), passengers (starting with the 4th hijacked plane) will gang up on a hijacker and prevent the hijacking from happening. And pilots will do anything to prevent a hijacker from gaining control of the plane.
Two words: circuit breaker. Every avionics system has to have one, or you run the risk of an overloaded circuit causing a fire onboard, with disasterous results. And every circuit breaker must be accessible in-flight, so that they can be reset if necessary, or manually popped if there's smoke but not enough current to pop it normally.
Pull the breaker, bye-bye soft wall.
Technology is not always the answer (ooo, can I say that here?)
Your post is dangerous hype. Don't be so literal. When they say it is "hack proof" they are simply saying (in a trendy way) that there is no interface to somewhere on the ground controlling the airplane. Thus, there is no way to "hack" into the airplane's navigation system to mess with its trajectory. The only way to mess with it is to jam the navigational signals being pinged to it, and that scenario has been discussed in the article.
This is an absolutely dangerous idea.
The concept of "pilot in command" is extremely important in the FAA's rulebook, and is hard set in aviation culture. It's very simple; one person in the cockpit is the pilot in command (PIC), and he or she is directly, completely, and personally responsible for anything that happens to that plane while it is in the air.
The FAA's rules also clearly state that, in an emergency, the PIC is authorized to do anything necessary to take care of the emergency, even if it breaks every other rule in the book. For instance, if my engine failed and there was no civilian airport in range, I could legally land on a city street or a military airstrip, fly through restricted airspace, override ATC commands, etc.
So what happens if my engine fails, I need to get to an airport on the other side of a major city, and that city is "protected"? Suppose I have just enough altitude to get there at my best glide rate. Will the airplane override my inputs and resist my approach over the city?
What happens if "soft barriers" prevents the pilot from safely responding to a systems malfunction? A lot of flight does occur over dense urban areas (the final approach to Santa Monica airport passes just a few hundred feet over some downtown towers). Who is responsible for the non-optimal response: the pilot in command, or the soft barriers system?
"Oh, but that'll never happen," one might respond. Go to the NTSB's aircraft accident report site and read some reports. Aircraft are complex mechanical devices, and they can and do fail all the time, often in subtle and bizarre ways.
As a pilot, I won't get anywhere near a plane with "soft barriers", even as a passenger.
-John
Keep in mind that the customers of this system are the same pilots who have been fighting tooth-and-nail to be allowed to have pistols in the cockpit. (Many pilots in the U.S. are ex-military, where they learned to fly, and may be predisposed to a certain mindset.) If you tell them that any of their control in the cockpit will be taken away by an automated system, they will cry bl**dy murder!
Good idea, but too strong a lobby against it.
Toon toon! Black and white army!
The most visible advantage of this is that the pilot cannot 'stall' the airplane. The airplane will not put itself in a situation where it would stop flying.
There was an incident a few years ago at DFW where one plane was on its takeoff roll when another crossed the runway in front of it. It wasn't a fly-by-wire plane, and the pilot of the taking-off plane yanked back the yoke and 'hopped' over the intruding plane. (Slightly more complicated than that, but that's basically what happened; he got enough air to get over the other plane before stalling and landing hard again; he didn't have enough speed to really get airborne.) An Airbus wouldn't have allowed the pilot to make that drastic a control change and would have plowed right into the other airliner no matter what the pilot did.
I heard about this incident from some insiders. I don't know if there's a reference on the web, but if someone else has a link, please provide it. IIRC correctly the intruding aircraft was a Delta plane and the taking off aircraft was a 737, but I'm not sure of that info.
Most crashes are due to pilot error, but I'm not quite ready to hand the controls over to a computer. I think it would be a disaster.
It's a question of "envelope management". Fly-By-Wire systems can be made to impose hard limits (reportedly the Airbus approach) or soft limits (Boeing).
With soft limits, the normal limits can be exceeded when the pilot assertively pushes beyond normal range of control inputs. This allows, for example, the temporarily "hopping" that you described, or to allow an emergency collision avoidance that would put excessive stresses on the airframe.
None of this is really needed. The hijackings on 9/11 worked because everyone "knew" that when a plane was hijacked, it was flown somewhere, demands were negotiated, and most of the time no one got hurt.
Now things are different. We saw that with flight UA 93. Both crew and passengers will flight to the death and/or crash the plane to prevent anyone from taking control of a plane by force.
There are lots of other things to be worried about, but terrorists commandeering planes isn't one of them.
On tractor trailers.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
I'm all for hard walls. Like the kind you put between the cockpit and the passenger cabin. The kind without doors. Good strong ones, too - made of thick plate steel. Make the terrorists bring a big torch to cut through it, instead of just busting down a door.
The airlines are sure to hate this idea. For them, it would mean they'd have to install sealed external doors just for the cockpit. Not to mention the extra crew support items - like a bathroom, separate provisions for meals, etc. That gets pretty damned expensive.
For us, it would mean that there would be no way to reach the cockpit. That means that there would be little reason to be searched for minor items like nail files and pocket knives. No more long waits at overcrowded and intrusive checkpoints. I mean, yeah, a terrorists could still kill people, or even everyone on board, but they'd have a hell of a time getting through a steel partition and flying the plane into a building.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
"The system would include an on-board database of the GPS coordinates of the no-fly zones."
So, why not bring your own database / replacement-HD with you when you hijack the plane?
What's the ROM do if it detects a harddrive swap in flight? Crash the plane immediately? Make everything a no-fly zone? Land at the nearest airport, lock the doors, and send knock-out gas through the cabin?
Of course, Lik Sang will sell a modchip. You can't have a computer in a plane without a working Linux port available!
Only in sunny Cal at Berkley could someone come up with a completely unworkable idea that might be implemented at a cost of billions of US dollars.
If the US were serious about protecting planes from being hijacked, the pilots would be armed. Two shotguns in the cockpit and the option to carry a concealed weapon. End of story.
There must be scores of legitimate reasons for airplanes to go over city centers.
* Most major sports stadia are near downtown, and planes towing advertisements often circle during the game.
* Even more annoying, stadium events often have flyovers. (Hmmm... maybe keeping those away is a good thing.)
* Helicopters can safely land downtown. This is a Good Thing(tm) when someone must be airlifted to a hospital. Of course, I don't think this proposal applies to helicopters, so what will terrorists use?
* Many airports are fairly near city centers. Soft walls would impede take off and landing.
* Others?
Now that I think about it, you could kill a LOT of people by crashing a plane into an airport terminal. We'd better throw up soft walls, anti-aircraft missles, and other anti-plane measures at all the nation's airports!
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
What do you do when your airplane says, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
...to really understand all of the problems with this idea. For one thing paying passenger aircraft have to be certified and one of the requirements is that the pilot be able to overpower any installed autopilot system. They would have to change the rules. But this sort of thing would introduce so much expense and complication and additional safety risks and new modes of failure that it will not be implemented. It's hard enough just to get something like TCAS or even GPS installed. It saddens me to think that my two passions in life (computers and flying) are also two of the most misunderstood fields around.
Tracy R Reed
PP-ASEL-IA and soon to be CP and CFI
There are times when temporarily approaching a stall is the best thing to do. See a lower post about "hopping" a plane crossing the wrong runway.
Also, because of Airbus' dedication to 'computer has final authority', one of their planes flew into a stand of trees at an airshow. The plane did a low pass, and then at the end of the pass, the pilot increased the throttle and nosed up. Being presumably an experienced pilot (showboating a new plane at an airshow wouldn't be trusted to new pilots I imagine), this would have worked. Unfortunately, this manuever would have put the plane too close to stall for the comptuter's tolerances, so it overided the 'pull up' until the airspeed was sufficient. The plane flew into the woods and crashed. I have it on video, email me if you want to see it.
The pilot couldn't stall the plane, true. He also couldn't even come close enough to save his own ass and a $40 million dollar plane from flying into the woods. The programmers can't think of everything that might happen in flight. Pilots can adapt instantanously to a new situation.
This also leads to an interesting cultural difference: in all Boeing planes (American), the pilot has final authority. The plane will do what it's told, and all thrust management, stall prevention, collision avoidance and autopilot systems are easy to overide or shut off. In fact, because of occasional problems (unforseen circumstances), Boeing reccomends that it's thrust management system be used sparingly.
On the other hand, in all new Airbus (Europe) planes, the computer has final authority over what the plane does, and can overide the pilot. Unfortunately, he's still held responsible for everything that happens, even if he can't control it.
So my thesis is thus: Boeing represents the American ideal of maximum individual freedom, while Airbus shows the European tendancy to defer to an 'authority' (the state, or in this case, the manufacturer) rather than be responsible for oneself, and others.
Newspapers in France, for example, can get away with basically saying 'The masses are too stupid to know what's good for them.' Such a thing would not go over well here in the US.
Well, that's my incoherent rambling for the day.
What are the first and last words of an Airbus pilot?
What's it doing now?
It's never done that before!
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
As many people here have pointed out, there would be many ways to circumvent any software protection, and such software would surely be an extremely large and complex project - and hence buggy. Anyone brave enough to try out such a system at say, Hong Kong International ?
The real problem of crashing large planes (airliners) into buildings is not their kinetic energy, but the chemical energy of the 100 tons or so of fuel they have on board. crudely speaking, that's the same chemical energy as 100 tones of high explosive.
What makes the 100 tons of explosive extremely dangerous is that all that energy is released in a few milliseconds. What makes an airliner a really dangerous weapon is that most of that 100 tons of fuel burns in a fireball in a few seconds. This occurs because the fuel "mists" on impact, as it it is violently expelled from broken fuel tanks and lines.
This was realised by ICI Paints Division over 30 years ago, who started work on how to prevent misting of aircraft fuel to prevent or minimize aircraft fires in crashes. This work recieved a huge impetus when two Jumbo jets collided on the ground at Teneriffe, and 500 people died.
ICI eventually developed a special fuel additive "FM9" that reduced misting greatly. A number of tests with old WWII bombers on rocket sleds demonstrated just how effective it was.
The FAA started to become keen on the idea, and got NASA to crash a remotely-controlled 707 with the modified fuel into a specially-prepared site at Edwards. Unfortunatly NASA did not do a sterling job: the remote control of the plane barely worked. The plane was crashed at double the planned sink rate, and in a slow flat spin. During the slideout, a "Tomahawk" sliced sideways through an engine, which exploded in a huge fireball. Burning fuel from the damaged engine entered the plane through a cargo door that burst open. The plane ended up a burnt-out hulk, and the senior managers present abandoned the project on the spot. It was a public relations disaster of the first magnitude.
It was a few months before all the troops got reassigned, so in the meantime the FAA guys did a thorough analysis of the crash. They found:
* only 50 gal / 12,000 burned up in the fireball
* the aircraft was not damaged by the fireball: the black soot could be rubbed off the airframe to reveal undamaged paint below.
* most of the fires went out just after the plane slid to a stop
* if you had been on board, you could have walked away (unlike the most similar crash on their database)
* the plane was burnt out by a fire in the cargo bay. the fire-fighters had used up all their foam on the wings and fuselage, and by the time they realised that there was fire _inside_ the cargo bay they did not have any left.
The FAA then did some rather dramatic experiments with jet engines and large quantities of fuel. When normal fuel was poured into the exhaust of a running engine, a large fireball developed, and when that impacted on a aluminium panel it melted and caught fire, with tempertures quickly exceeding 600 C. When the same was done with modified fuel, a small fireball developed, and the temperature of the aluminium panel rose to about 180 C - the boiling point of the fuel. When the test was finished the panel was intact, but blackened.
In the final tests, the modified fuel was poured into the _inlet_ of the running engine. A large fire developed, and so the engine was quickly shut down. When the same test was re-run with normal fuel, the engine exploded and the test site was wrecked.
Our conclusion was that the "FM9" additive worked in that it prevented misting, and hence extreme temperatures, however it was not able to provide perfect protection in the event of large quantities of fuel entering a major ignition source like a running engine.
My understanding is that the Twin Towers collapsed because the intense fire from the initial fireball overwhelmed the fire protection systems in the buildings, and led to sever