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Surface-To-Air Missiles At London Olympics
First time accepted submitter TheGift73 writes "I have to admit, when I first read about this I thought it was a hoax, but unfortunately it's true. The UK government is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential buildings in London for the duration of the London Olympics. From the article: 'The Ministry of Defence is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential flats during the Olympics.
An east London estate, where 700 people live, has received leaflets saying a "Higher Velocity Missile system" could be placed on a water tower.
A spokesman said the MoD had not yet decided whether to deploy ground based air defence systems during the event.'"
I heard this on the radio this morning, along with a heap of upset residents!
Those Poms will complain about anything.
I'd be wrapped to have a missile array on my roof!
London missile defense
...why we bother having the Olympics. We should all just have a big war instead. The winner gets a gold medal.
...fly into Charles de Gaulle and drive.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"UK government uses civilian residents as human shields to protect their missile sites".
It'll make the terrorists think twice before blowing up those flats to eliminate the SAM batteries.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
IOC needs to protect its copyrights somehow.
Who's taking odds as to the possibility that these fancy little toys will end up inflicting enough casualties to cover a front-page photo spread through either accident or malice, in a situation where just leaving them out of the picture would have gone fine?
This has been a farce from day 1, starting with the chronically underestimated budget for the whole thing, and the unfounded, misguided claims that it would be profitable for the country and spark unprecedented 'urban renewal', as well as a renaissance in sports for everyone in the country as people became inspired.
As each and every one of these things has been debunked, the fanatics and toadies have continued to shout them, just louder. The level of denial here is incredible. The best one I've heard so far was putting the lie to the idea that it would get the population back into sports. Studies have shown that this doesn't happen in host countries, for the olympics, the commonwealth games or whatever the event. When faced with this the organisers just repeated their feelgood bunk about how inspirational the whole thing was, despite having just been shown unequivocally that the opposite is true.
So now surface to air missiles? Well I suppose a gathering that big could be a target. I know what londoners will be saying though, the same as they said from the start (when I was living there) - "We never wanted them in the first place".
I mean, we DO have to protect Airstrip 1, after all.
... are in an ultralight air craft.
That's one advertisement you will not see during this year's olymics!
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Isn't that the claim, US and other NATO countries' media makes every time a victim of their invasion tries to place any air defenses in their cities?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
No no, for the Olympics they'll be using... wait for it... wait for it... Javelins!
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Well, the Internet Generation just hasn't really grasped just how horrific the Battle of Britain was.
But hey, those bunkers are only what, 70 years old? Some blood, sweat, toil and tears will get those spit spot in a jiffy.
Keep calm and buy our officially licensed London 2012 merchandise!
Oh course the states did it as well.
Operation Dark Shield.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
... when Daleks invade. Again.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
But we can scramble supersonically and the exclusion zone is large enough that anything save a hostile invasion force is probably going to be flying slow enough to intercept before it reaches the olympic site.
The zone is nearly 100 miles across. 50 miles at 500kts is around 5 minutes. The Eurofighters are going to be based at Northolt, within the area and around maybe 20 miles from the stadium. At speed they could get there in a minute or two.
There will be an AWACS flying around at all times as well as the usual ATC services looking out for unidentified aircraft. Radar is pretty good these days, if you fly in on anything of reasonable size without telling them, they will find you and they will scramble something after you.
I fail to see how just having fast jets on alert isn't enough?
http://olympics.airspacesafety.com/airspace-restrictions/restrictions-14-july-2012-to-15-august-2012
You know how long it takes to "scramble ze fighters"? Too long, in cases of "hey, that Airbus we thought was coming in to drop off tourists just decided to go kamikaze on us".
And do you know how insanely expensive keeping even a handful of fighters in the air 24x7 is? A lot. Not to mention the noise, and the intimidation factor (despite what /. thinks, the government does not want to induce general terror in their populace), and the chance of one of them crashing on accident OR shooting down a friendly plane by accident.
The winter games in 2002 in SLC had unprecedented military participation. There were radar and missile emplacements all over the foothills and there were troops all over the place including Apache helicopters and F-16's patrolling the skies during the days major events. The SLC international airport was off limits entirely to unscheduled flights and the military was authorized to shoot down any plane violating SLC airspace.
We see a lot of air traffic being that Hill Airforce base is close and Fort Williams is where the Apaches train but I've never seen so many military air craft all over the place.
If this is true...
Has anyone stopped to consider that if it came to situation that required ground to air missiles, by putting the launchers on residential buildings they have just made civilian homes prime targets...
Really? They are considering this?
I guess they fear that having the Olympics will make London a target for terrorists.
I guess somebody will have to explain it to the terrorists that they had best wait for the show to begin. Otherwise they might continue bombing busses and subway stations in the meantime and not have any anybody left to fly planes over the Olympic site come late July and August.
Ditto... I'm not so cynical of governments to deny that terrorist attacks have been made at the Olympics in even relatively peaceful times. But surface-to-air missiles? Why?
What is the minimum threshold for an airborne projectile's size to be shot down? After a certain threshold I start having trouble seeing someone lobbing a rocket/missile at the Olympics just because of the Olympics. Not only would it be practically a declaration of war against everyone in the world, but surely there would be more damaging targets if you just wanted to harm the UK.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
A curious Olympic Games. The only winning move is not to play
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I thought that we invaded Iraq to make us safer. I thought the war in Afghanistan would make us safer. They told us that all this war, imprisonment without trial, assassination, torture, mass surveillance, nude scans and enhanced pat downs would make us safer.
And yet now, after more than ten years of this, we've reached the stage that we're considering placing surface to fucking air missiles on top of people's houses in the middle of London.
What the hell happened? Are we losing this 'war on terror'?
This is just getting ridiculous.
I would agree. Cutting off the first letter of a quote 'he Ministry of Defence...' is something I would do while hurriedly posting quotes into MSN, not something an editor should do on a widely read website. Just ridiculous.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
maybe sports are a way to channel certain instincts without the massive damage of war
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
PULL! Should also make Discus and interesting event.
Oh, it gets worse than that... it's pure idiocy to even try using the things as a defense.
If some jackass wanted to slam a plane into the crowd, they'd merely have to fly very fast and very low. Most missiles have a minimum effective altitude (due to the physics of speed, for starters). Most missiles also work on the principle of sending shrapnel into an enemy plane, hoping to tear it apart... few (if any?) are made to simply blow a plane up.
Finally, with sufficient speed, no missile short of a full blown telephone-pole-sized SAM (we're talking massive multi-ton Soviet-style rigs) would completely stop a multi-ton object moving full-throttle at nearly 1,000 km/h. So instead of an intact aircraft slamming into a crowd, you now have a big flaming ball of metal flying into the crowd. Umm, okay...
The best you can hope for is to knock it off course, which in London just means that it'll slam into some other heavily-populated area full of buildings.
Seriously? Someone in security has been watching too many frickin' movies.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sounds cool, too bad your article finishes in mid-sentence. Does this rocket work well against someone on a motorcycle with a backpack full of explosives?
For the past Olympic games, the hosting country just made do with fireworks....
To step up to actual missiles, now that is going to take a lot of effort to top for future hosting countries !!
So instead of an intact aircraft slamming into a crowd, you now have a big flaming ball of metal flying into the crowd . . .
Sir, you know it's possible to shoot down an attacking aircraft away from its target, right?
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
He is mentioning the "away" is still full of London crowd. If a hostile plane can reach London itself, wherever it hits will cause loss of lives.
If the missiles are long or medium range SAMs, then there is no need to put it inside London and at the top of the apartment building. It appears therefore that the SAM is a short range.
Unless their exclusion zone is measured in a circle at least 100km wide (are we going to shut down Heathrow, then?), there won't be time to detect an inbound jet, sufficiently determine its intent, get permission to arm the weaponry, then actually shoot it down. At least, not with any confidence that the result avoids hitting buildings and population.
Not anywhere around London anyway... This is why I'm fairly safe in my assumption that by the time a missile launches, the jet will likely be in its terminal dive, or close enough to it to not really matter otherwise.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The olympics are great, they get all the tourists out of the rest of the world's vacation hot-spots so you don't have to wait in line or worry about hotels being booked up!
They had AA in place for the Athens Olypmics. They were clearly visible out beyond the outfield wall at the Softball and Baseball fields. This type of thing:
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6203/6074130550_928b676ecc_z.jpg
Although that was in an open, unpopulated area. Placing them on a residential complex is obviously a step up though.
Well, Buckingham Palace has a pretty low population density compared to its surrounding environs. I'm pretty sure if a plane smacked that it would raise a few complaints...
Long story short, there's really no part of that town that isn't heavily populated, a historical icon of some sort, or considered to be important as hell for some other reason. The best you could hope for is to knock it in the Thames, but doing that would require some real super-human planning and execution, and not a little bit of luck.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Not to mention, if I was a terrorist, those surface to air missiles, already conveniently placed, would be the ideal target.
A big ball of flame dissipating from 1000' is a lot better than a big ball of flame exploding on the ground, or IN a building. If the planes crashing into the World Trade Towers had exploded (and therefore released most of the fuel that caused the superstructure to melt) even 100' before they reached the buildings they'd still be standing today.
Oh, it gets worse than that... it's pure idiocy to even try using the things as a defense.
Silly me. All this time I thought it was just more security theater / thinking-of-the-children / penis extension.
Frankly, I find it amusing. Why bother getting a bomb on the plane when you can just shoot one instead?
I wonder what the odds of a misfire vs. the odds of someone actually attacking are. Sadly it wouldn't surprise me to find out the missiles are a bigger threat.
but the army boys! think of the poor army boys! this is their only chance to get in on some hot olympic tourist action.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
i am an conscript in estonian defence forces in air defence batallion, i man a radar station and control fire of VSHORAD-s(Mistral) and AAA(ZU-23-2 "Sergei"). in private life i fly gliders as a hobby. so you could say i see both sides of the equation: pilots point of view and SAM operators point of view. and i say you can deffinetly avert the cource of passanger plane off a stadium full of people. sure it would still fall into a populated area but pretty much anything is better than a stadium full of people. using SAM-s at olympics isnt anything new eighter. speed is not a problem, the man at the top of decision making tree will know the second a plane breaks into air defence area and then its just a matter of yes/no getting down to SAM operators - and they will already be ready waiting for the go code, just a matter of pulling the trigger. and thats the worst case scenario where there is zero warning time
How is this insightful? Whether or not the UK is a nanny state, it has nothing to do with this. What, are they nannying their citizens with missiles?
--
paranoid nanny state
With reason. There are a lot of Muslims in Britain, 24% of whom think that the 7/7 London underground bombings were justified. With 2.8 million Muslims, that's 700,000 people who would think that attacks on the civillian infrastructure are justified. Even if only one in a thousand would be prepared to do something that is a real threat.
The issue isn't whether its paranoia, there is a real danger. The issue is does this add to the danger or contribute to safety.
I was watching Patriot missiles launches live on the BBC during Gulf War 1. 1,2,3 they went off, but number 3 turned right very quickly and exploded nearby. Turns out that a "Scud got through" and killed 28 soldiers at the same base these Patriots were fired from. Funny coincidence, especially with the Israeli clamour for the Patriot at that time as a missile shield.
Not anywhere around London anyway... This is why I'm fairly safe in my assumption that by the time a missile launches, the jet will likely be in its terminal dive, or close enough to it to not really matter otherwise.
The missiles involved sound like some sort of multiple round MANPAD on steroids that was designed to take out gunships or fast moving, low flying mud-movers. Not exactly your first choice for shooting down hijacked airliners so unless they are expecting air strikes on the Olympic stadiums or a gunship attack I think we can safely assume this measure is being taken mostly for propaganda value. Let's hope this doesn't backfire on the Britishers when the media, in a fit of collective reality detachment, launches a spectacular news analysis of what the damage will be if a jet airliner is shot down by a SAM and crashes in central London. I'm rather looking forward to the Olympics and it would be a pity if the tabloids were allowed to spoil it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
That Virginia Beach residential area and central London residentials are quite a different thing.
From Google Maps & Street View:
Virginia Beach: 2-story buildings covering one third of the surface.
London: ~4-story buildings on two thirds of the surface with seemingly much less floor area per apartment.
Wikipedia says, London has 7.5 times the population density of Virginia Beach.
Only stupid right-wing Americans complain about "nanny states". It's a curiously American disease.
Everybody else is too busy getting on with their lives and enjoying universal health care to have time to mouth off about 'teh evul gubmint'
Sure, the speed of the missile itself is not a problem. But getting this "go code" in time seems impossible.
The Olympic Village is in the middle of London, lined by civilian airports.
* London City airport with 200 flights per day is just 5km away (that's just 20 seconds at full speed, or 60 seconds at landing speed!)
* Heathrow airport with 1300 flights per day is just 30km away.
* Gatwick and Stansted airports are both 40km away, 1100 flights per day between them.
All the flights from these may overfly London, and Heathrow planes are often in holding patterns over Central London.
It's basically impossible to define a "air defence area" in London. And if a passenger plane accidentally strays into it, a pilot says "sorry, my mistake" on radio, what politician is still going to give the "go code" to shoot it down in 20 seconds?
I think that somebody has secured the tinfoil hat to his head with too many elastic bands.
The full article is for subscribers only.
Mach 3.5, laser guided, whether it works against a motorcyclist depends on your "to hit" roll.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Australia basically lucked out in having the last truly successful Olympics. Since then computers, the internet and the drive for participation over sucked in by marketing passivity is taking over.
Whiny, it's not lying it's acting product promoting, athletes and their lawyers, as just so yesterday, last millennium in fact. Olympic gold medal winners are promoting crappier and crappier products, it's getting so bad, using the reduces the appearance value of a product rather than enhancing it.
I stopped taking the Olympics seriously when McDonalds became a sponsor.
OK, that's not true, I stopped taking the Olympics seriously when Roy and HG got involved.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"No one died" times 7.5 is still not much.
but surely there would be more damaging targets if you just wanted to harm the UK.
In conventional warfare terms there are, but terrorists don't have the resources to wage such a conflict. They are forced to go after militarility insignificant but high profile targets that will induce terror in the general population.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Here is what it said:
Fewer than five per cent of Muslims polled believed they should separate themselves from non-Muslims, and fewer than 10 per cent believed it was acceptable for religious or political groups to use violence for political ends.
and
Almost 80 per cent agreed that the attacks on the London Underground in July 2005 had damaged the image of Muslims in Britain.
Hardly as as damning as you suggested. The right wing media in the UK has been doing its up most to portray Muslims as the enemies of the "truly British" white majority. I'm not saying there is no issues with Muslims in Britain, but anything negative written about them needs to be read with a whole heap of salt.
Normally posts of this calibre are written by ACs.
With your powers of extrapolation, I hope you're not a financial advisor.
I'm a lefty, and I complain about the nanny state too. I'm all for universal health care and taxing everyone what it takes to pay the bills. But I just can't stand it when they make laws that restrict actual freedom for lots of people, just to appease the "what about the children" pearl-clutchers.
Well, they could use something along the line of a nuclear tipped ballistic missile interceptor, that ought to properly vaporize the plane mid-flight.
Although I guess there's that other problem with this particular solution.
On the other hand, they're talking about putting surface to air missiles on top of residential buildings for the Olympics. Eleven years ago, this might have been on the Onion. The world IS kinda crazy right now.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
This thing simultaneously fires three laser guided, tungsten jacketed shells off the top of a rocket, travelling at Mach 3.5, each with half a kilogram of high explosive. They fly 1.5m apart to maximise the chance of hitting a fast moving object, they can out-turn a plane turning at 9Gs and any one of the three hitting is enough to tear through the armour of a modern APC, though the fragmentation alone would be enough to kill a person several meters away.
If you let me choose any weapon for seriously ruining the day of a motorcyclist from the top of a building, I could think of nothing better than this one. In fact, I still find it hard to believe that the British were actually crazy enough to build such a thing.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
You might have to worry about single person aircraft, but those don't really do all that much damage. We had some jackass fly one into an IRS building a few years ago and I think he was the only one who died. Sure, crashing one into the crowd might result in 40-50 deaths, but you probably have more people than that die in London from paper cuts on an average day (Ooh, maybe a single person aircraft could drop sharp paper leaflets... Better not tell the terrorists about THAT...) It's much more likely that you'll accidentally shoot down a traffic helicopter than any legitimate threat, and have a flaming ball of burning traffic helicopter crash into the streets of London.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unless their exclusion zone is measured in a circle at least 100km wide (are we going to shut down Heathrow, then?) [...]
We don't need an exclusion zone to shut down Heathrow for the duration of the Olympics. We've got immigration officials to do that for us!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
No pizza delivery during the Games then?
Now you linked to the daily mail, otherwise know as the daily hate. To show the bias read its article on the survey versus this one and you will see the hate filled anger the daily mail is going for.
The headline of the daily mail article is
Almost a quarter of Muslims believe 7/7 was justified
but the question asked in the survey was
To what extent do you agree that the July bombings were justified because of British support for the war on terror?
(To which 11% strongly agreed, 11% tended to agree, with it saying all agree was 22%. I don't know where they got the 24% I think maybe channel 4 shifted the figures slightly for some reason).
Now as you can see the question is not as the title of the article suggests, "Do you believe the July bombings are justified?" but "...were justified because of British support for the war on terror?".
This is really badly worded, I can read it to mean did the bombers justify it because of the British support for the war on terror, in which case I would also agree with this statement. I'm not saying everyone who read the question interpreted it that way but I'm sure some did.
On doing a little reading around this study, I found this blog and specifically this comment, that reflects my views on it, I'll the relevant part below
Posted by: Bernard Bumner Author Profile Page | October 7, 2009 5:53 AM
If, on the other hand, you are using this to support your case:
To what extent do you agree that the July bombings were justified because of British support for the war on terror?
22% All Agree
Then I would have to say that I don't really understand the question - the bombers certainly justified their unjust actions by reference to British support fo the war on terror.
It is an ambiguous question. I suspect that many people were expressing support for the bombers, but I cannot reasonably conclude that it is all of that 22% of respondents, and in the absence of properly published methodology and data, I certainly wouldn't extrapolate this to represent British Muslims as a whole.
Actually, the presentation of that survey data is rather worrying, because it conflates (via proximity) the 7/7 bombings (the qeustion above) with what could easily be benign insight into social discord; 13% of respondents agreeing that,
I can understand why young British Muslims might want to carry out suiceide [sic] operations
At the same time, offering up the absolutely meaningless:
It is acceptable for religious or political groups to use violence
(Which only 9% agree with, and tends to cast further doubt on the idea that 22% agree with the actions of the 7/7 bombers).
It be blunt, it is not well-presented data, and is therefore difficult to draw conclusions from.
On other matters: I'm not sure why anybody on this thread would assume that anti-semite, Holocaust denier, and convicted racist Nick Griffin is not a racist leader of a racist political party.
And there's a term for noting such "differences": rationalizing hypocrisy, as few countries have been as consistently aggressive over the last 100 years as Britain and the United States.