Ireland's Potential 911...an interesting scenario

MrPudding

Originally posted by RicardoSmith


While I have no doubt that they probably will be air patrols by UK aircraft, probably Tornados or F15's from the UK,

Do you mean aircraft stationed in the UK or aircraft belonging to the UK? The UK does not own any F15s.

And cowboy, what use would a submarine be? I'm not sayint there won't be one but what use would it be?

The question of effectiveness is an interesting. I agree that it would be impossible to bring down a plane in such a way as to not damage vast areas of Dublin or without loss of civilian life. But that is not the point. If the purpose is to bring the plane down in order to save the life Dubya that is doable. OK it is only doable at a huge cost to Dublin and it's inhabitants.

To this end a quick question, who much thought to the safety of Dubliners will the stinger armed secret service agent posted on the roof of liberty hall give when he spys a plane heading towards his beloved boss?

MrP

seamus

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
I wouldn't say baseless. I'd say greatly reduced. Its also a lot harder to get into the flight deck now. Also there are a few airliners around the world that are missing. Noone knows where they are. You'd never know where they would turn up.

I'd say baseless. Any hijacker would have a very tough time firstly getting through airport security with a useful weapon, and, as Gandalf says, most passengers would now fight, since they would immediately assume the plane is going to be crashed.

He is a pioneer actually

I think the joke is about GWB being a recovering alcoholic

There are logistically simpler and more potent ways of cicumventing security in this country, than trying to hit a small building with a large plane. Even if they did manage to get the aircraft down to 300mph-ish, they would make it from one side of Dublin to the other in a matter of minutes. The city itself would be a blur, never mind trying to hit Leinster House.

jesus_thats_gre

Maybe the Amercans will provide security in the air for the visit? Or the British?

*have not actually been arsed reading half the thread!

MrPudding

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Maybe the Amercans will provide security in the air for the visit? Or the British?

*have not actually been arsed reading half the thread!

I would imagine that would be the case. There are plenty of US fighters in the UK. There would typically also be guys with stinger shoulder launched AAMs.

Someone mentioned earlier that it would be easier just to kill him with a sniper rifle. I would imagine that this would be nigh on impossible. Part of the secret service advance party duties is to identify possible sniper positions. Once identified these will either be overlook by ss snipers or have agent actually there. I don't think there are too many possible sniper positions giving easy or even possible shots of the Dail. Plus sniping is quite simply very difficult.

MrP

Scruff

he's flying into shannon and from there going to dromoland castle. Security around there has been crazy for the last few weeks. Dont think there would be any quams about shooting down a hijacked plane over shannon. it not densely populated and is a dump anyway (i'm from clare btw). Trying to hit a building in a wodded and hill area is also damned hard i'd say so they're probably samrt enough to not try that.As for them driving up a in a car bomb, forget it. since the new newmarket bypass, dromoland is no longer on the mail ennis-limerick road and there'll be road blocks on every access road for days before hand.

Security is going to be so tight most people working in shannon are expecting to have the day\weekend off due to the unprecedented security.

Imo, nothing is going to happen. just the guards and army going on a major bender after a eventless weekend where they got paid buckets of overtime to babysit bothareens and stop locals on their way to\from home\farm\bog\pub\work.

TommyK

Originally posted by DublinWriter
Exactly what do we have in this country to stop such an attack, even if it wasn’t in the context of a Bush context?

Afaik, US jets always patrol the skies whereever the Prez is on his travels.

And Ireland bought some anti-aircraft cannon off the Dutch after 911. Dunno how effective they are though. We also do have a few SAMs - probably very old ones, but they do exist.

Anyway, if all else fails, I'll get a hang-glider with one of those arse-engines and rig up my shotgun to the front of it. I call it the "X-101 Interceptor" and it beats the pants off anything the Yanks can russel up! So who needs F16's!

MadsL

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Well I think we should at least have passable anti-aircraft weaponry to try to shoot down such an aircraft heading for say the Dail or the International Financial Services Centre. I mean do we consider ourselves and our lives to be so worthless as to be not worth defending from physical harm? People here complain about the cost, but what is the price of life?

...and you think housing refugees is a waste of money. Good Christ!!!

Sparks

Originally posted by gaelic cowboy
He is a pioneer actually

No, he isn't. He's a recovering alcoholic and junkie, but not a pioneer.

RicardoSmith

Yes I meant the UK Tornados or the US F-15's in the UK. The Tornados have the best loiter so they'd probably be usually used. But then again the US might like to just do it themselves. They have a tendency to do everything themselves you might have noticed.

But still, it would be very hard to bring down an airliner before it got to its target once you realised it was heading for Dublin. But it such a small risk now, anyway.

As for the difficulty or getting an airliner to hit a building. Well anyone with a minimum of training could do it. When you think about it the area of a runway that an airliner actually touches down isn't that big and they manage to hit that fine. The trick is landing on the runway, not hitting it.

MrPudding

Interesting, I thought the F15s with FAST packs installed would have a better loiter time. I kinda like the tornados though. I presume they would prefer US planes protecting Dubya anyway.

I also think it would actually be very easy to bring down an airliner. First of all, they don't have any countermeasures so no way to trick a missile. Secondly, if we are talking about a hijack the skills of the pilot may not be up to avoiding an anti-aircraft missile.

As I mentioned earlier it may be difficult to bring it down without destroying huge areas of Dublin. This is presuming that the plane was close to Dublin when it was found to be a risk. And the person bringing it down cared about destroyong areas of Dublin or it's leafy suburbs.

Oh, and arcadegame, do you know how many genuine Irish homeless people the money for an anti-aircraft missile could house?

MrP

echomadman

He's landing in shannon, i didnt know he was going to dublin at all.

Clare and limerick are crawling with Secret service atm, the cops and army were welding all the manholes along the shannon-dromoland castle road shut today, I had the misfortune of breaking down just beside them and getting quizzed by a garda about what i was doing.
Shannon airspace will be crawling with USAF or navy fighters for the duration I'd imagine , tbh they're around a lot of the time anyway these days.

dark_knight_ire

I dont really think we need an airforce for his visit. The USAF will be up over the clare sky. Besides preventing a attack by a muslim group does not cost that must it comes from intelligence that how the Gardai took down the real IRA. Besides its not like an airforce would be needed we are so small i would guess if a world power attacked us we would last all of 2 days lol. Its good to have a world power as a neighbour beside us they look out for us

The Beer Baron

wouldn't baldonnel be a better place for him to land anyways?

Turkey

Beer Baron,if he was coming to Dublin, then yes Bal' would be a better place to handle this particular character, but unfortunatly due to refusal by sucessive governments to invest in defence means that Bal' is still one of the smallest military airports around,and the shrubs B747 cannot land there.
As for the rest of the discussion the People on www.irishmilitaryonline.com who actully know something about defence,unlike some of the more vocal here, are reasonable confident that jet fighters cannot definitly defend against a 9/11 type event, either phyically or [somethat never seems to occure to the looney left] morally.
NO, this country probally needs jet fighters for a whole host of other reasons, but that is not something that can be reasonably discussed amongst some of the members of this board.

PHB

I absolutely guarentee that the american military have the ability to launch planes in time, since otherwise the president wouldn't be secure

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Turkey
Beer Baron,if he was coming to Dublin, then yes Bal' would be a better place to handle this particular character, but unfortunatly due to refusal by sucessive governments to invest in defence means that Bal' is still one of the smallest military airports around,and the shrubs B747 cannot land there.
As for the rest of the discussion the People on www.irishmilitaryonline.com who actully know something about defence,unlike some of the more vocal here, are reasonable confident that jet fighters cannot definitly defend against a 9/11 type event, either phyically or [somethat never seems to occure to the looney left] morally.
NO, this country probally needs jet fighters for a whole host of other reasons, but that is not something that can be reasonably discussed amongst some of the members of this board.

What Jet fighter needs a "long" runway? (What do you mean by long?) At many of the air shows lots of jet fighters used the existing runways. What problems did they have?

The 747 is a civilian transport not a military aircraft. So are you saying Bal need to be able to handle long haul airliners? If not What other military aircraft of the same size as a 747 would you see as being frequent user of an upgraded Baldonnel?

I was under the impression (likely wrong) that the main limitation of Baldonnel as a Civilian Airport was that it couldn't take the weight of the larger airliners, not to mention you need a vastly bigger apron to manoever "heavies" as compared to fighter sized aircraft. I was also under the impression that the Air Corps wanted Baldonnel to remain a dedicated military field and not share it with civilian traffic at all. That would seem to be at odds with wanting it expanded to take aircraft like a 747.

It has already been pointed out in THIS thread on a few occasions about the inability of a fighter to defend Dublin City from a 9/11 style attack. So your not telling us anything new there. Its common sense, it doesn't require any expertise at all. As an aside theres no one on www.irishmilitaryonline.com with the kind of expertise your suggesting either. Unless the've been moonlighting with other air forces. Which is a possibility I suppose.

Name one reason Ireland needs Jet fighters. One threat that we need to defend against. Since you've already sataed that you can't use them to defend against 9/11 style attacks.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by PHB
I absolutely guarentee that the american military have the ability to launch planes in time, since otherwise the president wouldn't be secure

If you have to launch an aircraft you're screwed. They'd have 2-3 mins max for the threat to be identified, the the order passed to the fighter, the fighter to get into the air, manoever to find the target, lock it up on radar, get an active lock with the missile, fire the missile, the missle time time to target, then launch a second missle.

PHB

Well then I imagine that Bush has planes flying over his head securing his perimiters, if there was any security threat Bush wouldn't be allowed go, its that simple

Turkey

Sorry Ricardo, I more then likely misrepresented the suitation there, I ment it would be convient if BAl' suited all hi-risk passengers like the shrub, but his ego can only be fitted, it seems, in a B747.
It has nothing to do with long runways BTW, for example: a C-130 cannot land in Abbyshrule, not because of the length of the runways, but because of the way they are made, the C-130 would effectively plough into the Longford countryside and tear itself apart, and probally do it in it's normal stopping distance but the results would still be quite serious.
As for the IMO site, I did not imply that any of them were experts on jet based defence, [this is something an independent country like this needs to develope], but some of them are experts on defence, something which is not strongely represented on this board, [that is not necessarly a bad thing IMHO]
Oh , BTW, some of IMO contributers are indeed from other defence forces, canada, the USA, OZ, and the UK, and probally others as well.
Really, the defence against a 9/11 type event is not common sense at all, many people , particularly those who know little about military avaition stress the time element involved, this is not the important factor at all, an intercept is the easy bit, it's the phyical and moral implications of shredding an airliner full of innocent people that is more relevent. For instance, Aa B747 would, most likely, require 4 seperate engin hits to bring it down, [it can keep height on one engin, and a 200 tonne aircraft does not have to be travelling fast to to creat carnage], this is quite apart from the moral question of us speeding to their deaths some people that some scum have already condemmed to death, by their s**tty actions.[historically ,only two modern airliners have been brought down by military action, both by USSR forces, very few details of how it was done are available]

As for your last paragraph, the reasons have been given on this board, they are as valid as anything based on opinion can be, the decision to aquire such assets is not up to us, it probally has already been made, hopefully the correct one has been made.
We are unlikely to suffer any hardship if jet fighters are bought, if they are not.....well I am not capable of looking into the future...... nor do I want to be, the past and present have been bad enough , thank you.

jackofalltrades

For instance, Aa B747 would, most likely, require 4 seperate engin hits to bring it down

Air to air missiles such as the Sidewinder explode before that hit their target releasing large amounts of shrapnel. With this explosion more than likely occuring just behind the engines there would be massive damage to the tail fin, rear airelons
and rear fuelage leading to decompression and loss of control.

Check out the damage to this DHL plane that was flying over Baghdad, it only took one ground launched missile to render the plane almost completly uncontrolable.

http://teamhouse.tni.net/Info/airbus/airbus_missile_damage.htm

bonkey

Originally posted by Turkey
We are unlikely to suffer any hardship if jet fighters are bought, if they are not.....well I am not capable of looking into the future...... nor do I want to be, the past and present have been bad enough , thank you.

Paraphrased :

If we do X, then the future is probably ok.

If we don't do X...well I don't like trying to look into the future...

Are you actually aware of the ridiculousness of that contradiction, or do you think this is some new "subtle" way of convincing people that an Irish Air Force is necessary?

jc

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by jackofalltrades
Air to air missiles such as the Sidewinder explode before that hit their target releasing large amounts of shrapnel. With this explosion more than likely occuring just behind the engines there would be massive damage to the tail fin, rear airelons
and rear fuelage leading to decompression and loss of control.

Check out the damage to this DHL plane that was flying over Baghdad, it only took one ground launched missile to render the plane almost completly uncontrolable.

http://teamhouse.tni.net/Info/airbus/airbus_missile_damage.htm

Why would there be decompression at low alttitude?

A sidewinder wouldn't do that much damage, it only has a small warhead. You'd need something bigger to cause the damage you are describing. A Sidewinder is effective on something like a fighter because its small and theres a lot of sensitive stuff packed tightly together. An Airliners a lot difference. Even with fighters theres plenty of reports of them surviving Sidewinder strikes. The IAF had one A4 return with one lodged in the rear fuselage! Also it would be a lot harder to get a sidewinder to track the heat source of a airliner when its over a city with many many conflicting heat sources.

Besides that still leaves you with 200-400 tons of airplane landing on Dublin city somewhere. Is that a soultion when you are going to kill people on the ground and those in the air aswell?

That Airbus was a lucky hit that managed to ignite one of the fuel tanks. It was the fuel burning thats done most of that damage. The missile itself didn't do that much damage. It likely to have been RPG as if it was a SA7 it would have hit the engine not the wing. The entry hole looks like a single projectile, again in keeping with a RPG round rather than a SA7. They managed to land it too.

There was a C5 that was hit and lost one engine, just after they got airborne (I think) they lost one engine and that was all. They were hit on an engine and seemed to have shrapnel damage localised to the engine area only. Which woulld suggest a Surface to Air rather than a RPG. They made it back on the runway no problem too.

So in neither case was the aircraft destroyed or crashed.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Turkey
Sorry Ricardo, I more then likely misrepresented the suitation there, I ment it would be convient if BAl' suited all hi-risk passengers like the shrub, but his ego can only be fitted, it seems, in a B747.

Actually its a electronic command bunker. Air Force One is configured for long-range special air mission (SAM) transport for the President of the United States; the aircraft is shielded against EMP (electromagnetic pulse) and carries MCS (mission communications system) three operators, and provision for worldwide secure communication. So its not really ego. Basically he can hit the big red button and launch the US nukes from it.

Originally posted by Turkey

It has nothing to do with long runways BTW, for example: a C-130 cannot land in Abbyshrule, not because of the length of the runways, but because of the way they are made, the C-130 would effectively ....

C-130's are designed to be able to operate from rough airfields, dirt strips even, and are designed for short take off and landing specifically. Why would they have a problem with a real runway?

Originally posted by Turkey

As for the IMO site, I did not imply that any of them were experts on jet based defence, [this is something an independent country like this needs to develope], but some of them are experts on defence, something which is not strongely represented on this board, [that is not necessarly a bad thing IMHO]
....

Those so called experts on the other forum, were trying to justify buying JSF's last time I was on it. But yet no one could give an example of where Ireland has been ever attacked from the air (unless by mistake)! and that was sixty years ago. Thats doesn't strike me as expertise, thats just boys wanting toys to play with. Besides they'd probably sue the govt because the new planes are too noisy. Did they ever manage to give them quieter guns so that their poor ears don't hurt.

jackofalltrades

Why would there be decompression at low alttitude?

I pressumed medium to high altitude with respect to the standard flight paths of Civilian aircraft also my example relates to taking a plane down generally as opposed to taking one down over Dublin.

The two examples you give are military aircraft which are designed to in some way resistant to anti-aircraft fire. A standard B747 would not be hardened in anyway to this kind of attack AFAIK.

The plane was hit by a SAM 7 or 14 depending on which webiste you go to.
I'd say its nect to impossible to hit a plane at 8,000 ft with an RPG.

With regards to the fire causing the hydraulic failure do you have a link to this as I have not been able to find a detailed report on the crash.

MrPudding

Originally posted by jackofalltrades
The plane was hit by a SAM 7 or 14 depending on which webiste you go to.
I'd say its nect to impossible to hit a plane at 8,000 ft with an RPG.

I would say it would be next to impossible to hit a moving plane at any altitude with a RPG. The RPG is not an anti-aircraft weapon. It is an unguided line of sight weapon.

MrP

jackofalltrades

So we're agreed then.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by jackofalltrades
I pressumed medium to high altitude with respect to the standard flight paths of Civilian aircraft also my example relates to taking a plane down generally as opposed to taking one down over Dublin.

The two examples you give are military aircraft which are designed to in some way resistant to anti-aircraft fire. A standard B747 would not be hardened in anyway to this kind of attack AFAIK.

The plane was hit by a SAM 7 or 14 depending on which webiste you go to.
I'd say its nect to impossible to hit a plane at 8,000 ft with an RPG.

With regards to the fire causing the hydraulic failure do you have a link to this as I have not been able to find a detailed report on the crash.

Actually apologies I missed the 8000ft (speed reading at work) so yeah your right it has to have been a SAM. But its surprising that theres no shrapnel damage, but maybe the warhead was contained within the tank when it exploded. The bulk of the damage (I didn't say hydraulic failure) does seem to from the fire rather than from the explosion though.

The hydraulics failing is a bit odd since I thought the Airbus is FlybyWire and thus you'd expect damage to one hydraulic flight system NOT to effect the rest of the systems. They generally have 2 or 3 backups, so again its odd that they all failed at the same time. Blame the computers I say

AFAIK the C5 and 747 are not armoured in anyway, I assume thats what you mean by armoured. But the presidents 747's might be in key areas. But regardless both the Airbus and C5 were hit by SAM's and neither were destroyed and both managed to land safely. So thats the important point to note.

In the case of Russians shooting down airliners, as don't have any info to hand on the method of attack (IR or Radar missles or cannon) at what alttiude it took place at. A cannon would decitimate an airliner especially if was pressurised.

jackofalltrades

Being resistant to a SAM strike includes as you say armour and also distributing critical systems around the plane and also designing the plane so that it can fly with only 1 engine(just like some civilian planes) or that it can fly with heavy damage to aelirons.
It's crazy some of the photos you see of A10's that have severe damage and can still fly home.

The SA 7 has a warhead of 1.19 kg where as the Sidewinder missile has a warhead of 9kgs and im guessing a lot more shrapnel which would be a lot more accurate and cause a lot more damage.

Gotta hand it to the DHL pilot for landing the plane in the shape it was.

thejollyrodger

here, some people may or may not want Ireland to have Jet fighters for what ever reason. Fair enough.

But please do the math properly. These planes dont cost the billions that everyone says they do.

RicardoSmith

I don't think the that 747 or the C5 would have anything more in that regard than a civilian airliner but I don't know for sure. Be curious to find to find out. The sidewinder is more powerful, but I still don't think it would take out an big jet unless you got a lucky strike on something very vital. Like I said earlier. Some fighters have been know to survive a hit from them. Shrapnel is more damaging on a fighter because everything is closer together.

I remember reading about Cobra gunship pilots in Vietnam. If they got hit anywhere it had to be something vital, because there was no space in them for anything none vital.

Yeah hats off to the DHL guys. Some nice airmanship to put that back on the deck.