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Quote:

Originally Posted by cardiomd (Post 2135186)

and physics / current physical imitations. I'm always surprised that people think there will be any materials that can survive most combustion temperatures and energies. Even the steel that forms buildings can at best give you survival times until collapse, e.g. WTC in 2001.

Tall buildings were designed to withstand internal fires, not vast quantities of Jet A which are not normally present. They have foam-insulated steel structures for that reason. The 9/11 impacts stripped the foam off the steel structure around the impact site, making matters worse.

There are limits, but we could easily build something which could withstand max possible impact forces of an airliner. We're not talking about a spaceship hitting something at some astronomically high speed which would result in nothing but plasma.

Assume a max vertical arrival speed of something like mach 2 or thereabouts (the airframe of an airliner would disintegrate and slow down at some point prior to that). This would account for a deliberate full-power dive.

Assume X amount of fuel that would burn at Y temp for Z hours.

It's not so much about the materials, but rather the construction. A multi-layered container with materials which could deform to absorb impact, with some layers of thermal material and possibly a semi-passive cooling system (a fluid or solid which evaporates to remove heat). The airframe itself provides a lot of impact absorption, that's why the recorders are located in the tail...the only real extreme impact scenario involves a head-on arrival with the ground (or a mountain), either deliberate or wings-off lawn dart scenario. If the plane comes apart, aerodynamic drag will result in relatively low impact forces.

That's well within our technical limits. It would just be more expensive than what we have now, which works most of the time. Also it would be heavier and bulkier, which means it would cost more money on every flight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 2135620)

Terrorism seems less likely now with no plausible bad actors taking credit. Also the "main stream" terror groups have shifted away from targeting, or appearing to target, fellow muslims. There are certainly people who have axes to grind with Egypt (including AQ #1), but targeting random citizens of a muslim nation seems unlikely. If they got through security at CDG, they might have been able to take a different carrier, although they may have been trying to avoid certain no-fly lists or watch lists.

Although this could have been a full-mission-profile proof of concept, and they're waiting to take credit until they go "mass production".

A few good reasons to not take immediate credit

1. The good guys haven't figured it out yet. Why do their job for them?

2. Let's make sure all of our internal actors are safe and far away from scrutiny before taking any credit, thereby exposing our team-members.

3. They have other plans in the works with a similar or same profile. They do not want to compromise current operations by leaking what they did, and how they did it.

4. Operational security

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 2135630)

Yeah. What luck that my frying pan doesn't melt after hours of use and thank god for the high quality Chinese steel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by baseball (Post 2135960)

That would apply if a nation-state were behind it. But terrorist groups want credit, notoriety, and publicity if for no other reason than they are competing with other groups for financial support from those willing to give it. Terror-minded folks with means tend to prefer to back winners who get things done.

For terrorists taking immediate credit is very important, such that their operations are typically planned to allow for that...to the extent that the credit-taking often has a built-in mechanism to validate authenticity. Example, send an encrypted announcement email to the media BEFORE the event, and then follow up afterwards with the key to decrypt. This ensures the right bad guy gets the media credit, but doesn't risk blowing the op with advance notice. Also if it fails, the reporter will never know what the email said (unless he sends it to the NSA for some reason).

Waiting dilutes the impact and allows other to falsely take credit.

The flip side of this is if the bad actor (usually state-sponsored) prefers to avoid scrutiny, they can arrange with other like-minded groups for multiple bad guys to claim credit simultaneously, thus confusing the issue. Fun and games with these guys.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 2136075)

The majority of terrorist groups do take credit and fairly immediately so. Libya was behind Pan Am. Therefore no credit at all, don't even worry about immediate. Just lay low forever.

There are lots of great reasons to take immediate credit. I do believe the adversary is getting smarter and adapting more. The past "logic" of the days of ole don't hold up any more. I do think they get information security, operational security and want to preserve and protect their people, their sources, and methods. Their INFOSEC/OPSEC getting much better. They may be taking credit in their inner circles right now for all we know.

Wreckage found.

Quote:

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt on Wednesday said that it spotted and obtained images from the wreckage of the EgyptAir plane flying from Paris to Cairo that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all 66 people on board, according to a statement by the country's investigation committee.

The committee said in a statement that a vessel, the John Lethbridge, contracted by the Egyptian government to join search efforts for the data recorders and the wreckage "had identified several main locations of the wreckage." It added that it obtained images of the wreckage.

The next step, the committee said, will be drawing a map showing the wreckage location.

The vessel is equipped with sonar and other equipment capable of detecting wreckage at depths up to 6,000 feet (1,830 meters).

The EgyptAir Airbus A320 had been cruising normally in clear skies on an overnight flight on May 19. The radar showed that the doomed aircraft turned 90 degrees left, then a full 360 degrees to the right, plummeting from 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to 15,000 feet (4,572 meters) before disappearing at about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters).

The cause of the crash still has not been determined. Ships and planes from Egypt, Greece, France, the United States and other nations are searching the Mediterranean Sea north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria for the jet's voice and flight data recorders, as well as more bodies and parts of the aircraft.

Egypt's civil aviation minister has said he believes terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event. But no hard evidence has emerged on the cause, and no militant group has claimed to have downed the jet.

Leaked flight data indicated a sensor detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the plane's cockpit windows in the final moments of the flight.

Since the crash began, only small pieces of wreckage and human remains have been recovered in a search that has been narrowed down to five-kilometer (three-mile) area of the Mediterranean.

Wednesday's announcement came after Egyptian investigators said that time is running out in the search for the black boxes. They said on Sunday that only five days remain before the batteries of the flight's data and cockpit voice recorders expire and they stop emitting signals.

The boxes could reveal whether a mechanical fault, a hijacking or a bomb caused the disaster. Finding them without the signals is possible but more difficult.

EgyptAir aircraft found