https://thehill.com/opinion/national...-pager-attack/

 

https://youtu.be/jEzW4AoqKrg?si=GPByyw-HIJsSZBQe

I’m not uptight.

Not unattractive (TBD, your personal DeltaboundRedux experience may vary)

Turn me on tonight.

This is RADIOACTIVE.

Ho hum.

 

Exploding pagers and radios don't move the needle with regard to airport security.

Presently screening is conducted on multiple levels, from tactile to x-ray to topographic scans to other means of detecting threats. Whether it's a pager or laptop, it still undergoes the same screening.

On numerous occasions, I've personally carried plastic explosive and other contraband through airport security, and have been caught. Every time was a training event in which I was assigned to carry items through checkpoints and other places, to check, train, and test personnel, equipment, and animals. Whether it's plastic explosive taped to my abdomen, inside my suitcase, or in equipment, or other equipment, the means to detect are considerable, varied, and effective. That pagers in use by a terrorist organization in an unstable region were used against the terrorists doesn't change the nature of screening in the US; anyone bringing those pagers through would have been subject to the same screening before, or after, in the US. Further, because of this screening, it doesn't change our position or exposure in the cockpit, or on the secure side of the security checkpoint.

 

What JB said. Our system already accounts for PEDs stuffed with SEMTEX.

I'm guessing most hezbollah operatives are not frequent flyers to/from/within the US.

 

I think the rapid evolution of weaponization of readily available commercial drones presents much more of a risk to aviation safety than exploding pagers...

 

Yes, I agree with.

 

Very true... with the rapid evolution of technology coupled with accuracy of GPS it could, Tragecly, possibly the next dirty bomb or germ warfare,delivery system.

 

Laser/directed energy weapons are challenged to deal with large military grade missiles, especially high supersonic or hypersonic, due to the need to get X amount of energy on the target in a very short time.

DE weapons do not have any problems against slow, smallish drones... the weapons already exist, we just need the legal allowance for their use. If that doesn't evolve on it's own, it will happen 48 hours after the first significant drone attack in the US. The US military can't even zap stray drones flying over military bases, which is ridiculous (they might have got an exemption for nuclear weapons facilities).

We can also address that issue by only selling drones which comply with published geo-fencing, and disable themselves if the user tries to circumvent that. There's no fundamental "drone freedom" rights in the constitution. Seems to me they can and should be limited because they pose novel security AND privacy threats.

 

I can't see anyone buying off on the idea of a directed energy weapon protecting every airport. Most LASER DEWs tend not to be eye safe within 3-5 miles on a clear day and even further against the larger pupils when flying at night.. And yeah, microwave and EMF DEWs are perhaps a little better, but still not without human risk.

https://airpower.airforce.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-03/BPAF03_Directed-Energy-Weapons.pdf

As for geofencing and the like - while I agree that these capabilities ought to be restricted, if only to keep them out of turbine blades, that's easier said than done. The better programmers in my kids high school robotics clubp

https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc.

could easily overcome those limitations.

 

Risk would have to be balanced with risk of doing nothing. Would probably take a major event to get it over the hurdle.

But the Navy already has automated air defence systems (including a few lasers) installed on warships which also conduct flight ops, and has for many years... not too hard to deconflict autonomously.

No. Any computer engineer knows that when you bake machine code into the chip (firmware) it can't be tampered with. Easy to install ALL critical flight autonomy software functions on a single chip, so if you replace the chip the thing won't work at all. That can't be downloaded and reverse engineered either. You'd need the proptietary source code from the mfg., some very good software people, and a chip with a flash update feature to install your custom code.

Simple to not include the flash feature on the chip (slight economic downside)... that's puts the ball in the bad guy's court to design and build his own chip which will work with the rest of the drone. That would take nation state or large corporation resources, but if you can do that, you can build your own custom drones anyway.

Pretty easy to make them sufficiently tamper-proof that your average lone-wolf idiot or AQ cell can't turn an off-the-shelf unit into a weapon.

Easier to convert Teslas into autonomous car bombs.