[Rictor]

Hmm, I never even thought of that.

[diamondgeezer]

During the Cold War the Reds were far better at SAM tech, as they couldn't match the West in fighters. The Rapier is pretty damn deadly when it's locked on. But for flexibility, a MANPAAD is the way forward. A low flying airliner wouldn't have much of a chance.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Clave
If you want protection from 9/11 type events, then you have to be prepared to down the airliner, and quickly.  Scrambling fighters is not an option, unless you have them on permanent CAP, and even then, they will take time to reach the target.  

Not to dispute you but you might find this interesting Jets Scrambled to deal with "terrorist threat"

[Clave]

Interesting, well at least someone's paying attention...

As for Rapiers: http://www.army-technology.com/projects/jernas/

The maximum detection range of the radar is in excess of 15km. An optional range of 32km is available. The maximum elevation is 5km.

OK say that's about 10 miles (max 20) and 15,000 feet - compare that to a Bloodhound's 100 mile and 60,000 feet....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by ionia23

I set the weather conditions as similar as possible and was flying a 727.  The objective was that at the point the planes changed direction I had to find the greater New York City area, then the trade center itself (visible in my version of FS).

Even knowing which direction New York City is I was never, ever able to find it without using some kind of radio based navigation.

Steering a plane really isn't that hard to do, sure.  Not necessarily easy either.  In addition to knowing how to steer the plane I anticipate the hijackers had to:

A - Know how to disable the autopilot
B - Know how to operate the navigation radios
C - Know how to interpretate that the nav radios are tuned corrected to a Navaid near the New York area
D - Know what frequency to tune in on
E - Know what altitude to be at so as to avoid crashing into a mountain or something.

This challenge is amplified 100-fold when trying to hit the Pentagon.  You can't see it untill you're on top of it.  How did they know where to go?

You can't see diddly/squat in the cockpit of a commercial airliner.  For the life of me, I can't figure out how they pulled it off.  Hijacking a plane is one thing, knowing where the hell to aim is another.

Anyone?

Well, firstly how accurate is any GPS-style tech in a plane?

Secondly, how low were you RE: the Pentagon.  IIRC eyewitness accounts reported the plane that hit it as being very, very low down.. presumably below the level of radar and thus the level at which the exact path could be tracked(?).

Thirdly, they did have aviation training.  What I wonder is, are you trying to hit the buildings, or trying to duplicate what they did?  The latter is probably a hell of a lot harder to do so, the former closer to a 'real' simulation.

Unfortunately, it's really hard to do a google search to find out how they did it, because you get a ****load of nutjob pages coming up about how aliens / the CIA / commies / Israel / etc were responsible.    But the terrorists on 9/11 would have spent a long, long time planning it... and probably with a fanatacism beyond our understanding.