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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 12:13am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9075 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

Autopilot could land hijacked planes New Scientist

11:15 12 September 01 Catherine Zandonella, San Francisco

Aeroplane hijackings could be halted in progress with existing technologies, say aviation researchers, but the attempt would be risky.

"Most modern aircraft have some form of autopilot that could be re-programmed to ignore commands from a hijacker and instead take direction from the ground," says Jeff Gosling of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

If a hijacking were detected in progress, being able to control a plane from the ground would be crucial, says Gosling. "The only other thing you could do is shoot the target down."

Autopilot, the system that maintains altitude, speed, and direction during flight, is fully capable of landing a plane without help from the pilot, says aviation engineering researcher Dale Oderman at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. "We are already capable of flying unmanned military spy planes, so it is not far off to think that a remote system could land a commercial passenger jet."

Hijacking the fail-safe

However, Jeffrey Speyer, an aerospace engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles has qualms about the idea of remote control, saying that system could be a terrorist target itself.

He is devising a control system that would allow planes to fly close together in bird-like flocks. He says it could be adapted to override a hijacker's instructions, but "the system might be tampered with by the very people who you don't want taking over the plane."

The US Federal Aviation Administration experimented with remote landing of a commercial jet during the 1980's, says spokesperson Holly Baker at the FAA's William J. Hughes Technical Centre in Atlantic City, New Jersey. However it has not been an active topic of research in recent years.

Cockpit monitor

Detecting a hijacking is another area in which new technologies could play a role. Currently, if the pilot cannot use the radio to call for help, he or she can flip a switch to emit a distress signal that can be picked up by radar, says Oderman. The FAA could not confirm whether any distress signals were heard prior to Tuesday's attacks.

Numerous new technologies could call for help even if the pilot and crew were incapacitated. On board computers could detect when the plane has veered off course and then radio for help. Or, video cameras and voice recognition systems in the cockpit could alert ground-based crews, says Lewis Mingori, chairman of the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In future, researchers could deploy thousands of miniature networked sensors, or MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), to detect odd behaviour in the cockpit, says UC Berkeley computer scientist David Culler.

Security solution

To date, most of the FAA's research has been centred on preventing hijackings through increased airport security, says FAA's Baker. But advanced systems, like InVision Technologies' computerised tomography scan for explosives, are only now being adopted due to high costs.

In the case of Tuesday's attacks, it is difficult to predict how government agencies will respond in terms of air security, says Gary Ackerman, a terrorism expert at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

"Until we know how they got around existing security measures, it will be difficult foresee how to strengthen them," he says.

11:15 12 September 01

lunarchick - 12:15am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9076 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

rshowalter 9/14/01 10:40pm Questions that count uhhmmm!

lunarchick - 12:25am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9077 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

GI: glad that my posts re differenciation between Crime/Criminal and Culture/ethnicity were noted.

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Accident: Current thinking is there is no such thing as an accident --- only quality failure

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lunarchick - 04:51am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9078 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

Korea-N/S

lunarchick - 05:01am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9079 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

http://www.news.com.au/cartoonslib/0,4835,cartoon%5Enews45,00.html

lunarchick - 05:04am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9080 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

God bless America

lunarchick - 05:19am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9081 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,552387,00.html

~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,550122,00.html

lunarchick - 05:27am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9082 of 9096)
lunarchick@www.com

http://news.ft.com/home/rw/ http://www.dawn.com/2001/09/15/

rshowalter - 09:27am Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9083 of 9096)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

This great cartoon by Peter Nicholson has a very practical message. It reads:

W'ere clever enough to fly people all over the world.

. . . to trade commodities and money all around the globe . . .

. . . to show live news by satellite or talk to anyone anywhere by cellular phone . . .

. . . but we're not clever enough to talk to get people to talk to their neighbors.

http://www.news.com.au/cartoonslib/0,4835,cartoon%5Enews45,00.html

We have some simple things to learn. Some of them may be simple.

(13 following messages)

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