Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

[PYROLYSIS]

Originally Posted by Apex Chase

1) Steal a commercial jet
2) Throw some new paint on it
3) Load your nuclear weapon on it
4) Fly it over your intended target and detonate

No need to develop miniaturized warheads, ballistic missiles, or guidance systems. Besides, launching a missile raises red flags and gives away the launch site. Just a theory but it would be the simplest way for a terrorist organization to deliver a nuke and the most anonymous way for someone like North Korea or Iran to do it without putting their head on the chopping block.

It would be hard to hide a 777 on the ground so I would think they would want to move quickly. That is, unless it was flown onto a military air field with adequate hangars and security.

The fact that we still don't know where the plane is adds probability to your scenario. Our government has way too much technology (most definitely more than we know about) to not know where this plane is, or at least have an idea.

[Apex Motorsports]

Originally Posted by Silverlsinva

Wouldn't be to attack the USA there too many radars and early warning detections that the plane wouldn't even get close enough to land I think to do anything like that what fighter plans scramble in less than 15 mins right?

Who said the US had to be the target? Getting it to all the way to the US without detection would be extremely difficult but the possibilities are limitless. How many countries and terrorist organizations would love to hit Israel? What about hitting the Saudi/Kuwaiti oil fields, Strait of Hormuz, Suez Canal, or some other critical piece of infrastructure to cause massive world wide economic impact? Could be an issue or cause that is more significant in that particular region. Could be used as part of a false flag operation like in "The Sum of All Fears".

Or maybe it is at the bottom of the ocean. Who knows?

[ChrisBlair]

Originally Posted by Apex Chase

None of those things stopped someone from flying off with the plane in the first place. Who knows at this point?

None of what things? The ATC, transponders, and schedules?

None of those things are supposed to stop a hijacking. That's like saying the VIN and license plates didn't stop a car from getting stolen. They don't stop theft, they provide identification.

Those things I mentioned identify an aircraft, its destination, its crew, and its place of debarkation and destination.

A plane has to come from somewhere and be headed towards somewhere, and a commercial jet on an authorized flight will have a known crew a known destination, and will be coming from a known starting point, and at a certain time on a known schedule, and will be expected to be headed towards a known destination.

The 'weapon plane' will have to either mimic another flight somehow- which means a risk of there being *two* flights being tracked with the same ID (the legit flight and the rogue flight) which is a huge red flag , or it will have to come from somewhere it cannot be tracked and be detected someplace and at some time where detection will not matter, as response (shooting it down) will be impossible.

For the USA, that means on the one hand, eliminating a legit flight by destroying it or by some other unknown means that renders it 'silent' to detection, assuming that plane's identity with the 777 that is missing, and going from there. That seems problematic and difficult in the extreme.

OR, that means coming in over water someplace where detection won't matter, reaction time cannot be swift enough to foil the mission. In the case of the USA, that means over the ocean. The 777 can do that, but does that equal "being undetected"? That depends on the USA's detection capability as well as other countries. That seems an easier problem to solve. However....

A 777 can go nearly 12,000 nautical miles and could be made to go further through modification. But it has to take off from somewhere. That means it would have to take off undetected and remain undetected in order to reach the USA over the ocean. It would obviously have to fly over land somewhere, where it also could be detected. In this case it must not have to land anywhere near a civilized area, so no stops. A 777 traveling further than its known range will also be a huge red flag.

These things are interesting mental exercises and it can be done, but it would be a fantastic plan and execution to succeed. that would make me theorize that the USA is not the target.

[Apex Motorsports]

I agree, the US us not a likely target. It would be a huge task and there are too many ways for it to go wrong. But like I mentioned in the post above there are a million other scenarios for how you could use it. What I was saying is that if the plane was stolen none of the systems or protocols in place to control and track aircraft prevented it from flying off to a destination unknown. It has been over a week and they still don't know the who, what, when, or where of this thing. That part of the world is the wild west compared to North America and Western Europe. If they had a place to land it without raising red flags they have a place they can take off from without raising red flags. From there it wouldn't have to be perfect, you would just need a couple hours window of not being noticed and then confusion about what was going on once/if they did. All anyone can do at this point is speculate but the evidence looks worse and worse every day.

[ChrisBlair]

Agreed, and it seems bad to say this, but I hope it crashed. In either case, I have to assume that all people on board have been dead for some time :(

[Apex Motorsports]

Originally Posted by ChrisBlair

Agreed, and it seems bad to say this, but I hope it crashed. In either case, I have to assume that all people on board have been dead for some time :(

I know exactly what you mean. There are no pretty answers at this point.

[Overflow]

Originally Posted by mikeyg36

And people want defense cuts. That's a joke.

This is what happened before 2001. People didn't see a need for so much military and America lowered their guard. And bam. We were attacked. I hate to say it, but it'll take another attack to wake us up again.

Originally Posted by FenwickHockey65

That's what I was thinking. There would be a pretty quick response to an unidentified aircraft on radar that wasn't responding to ATC.

I don't think it would be as quick and powerful as people would like to think. This isn't right after 2001 anymore. We've lowered our guard a lot since then.

[mikeyg36]

Originally Posted by Overflow

This is what happened before 2001. People didn't see a need for so much military and America lowered their guard. And bam. We were attacked. I hate to say it, but it'll take another attack to wake us up again.

Bingo. I've been saying this for awhile now. Everyone says "Never Forget" when it comes to 9/11, but most people have already forgotten. This isn't the '40s anymore; this is a new type of enemy and a new type of warfare that hasn't been seen before. Instead of cutting defense how about we fix medicare, medicaid, social security, and all of the other broken government bullshit?

[FenwickHockey65]

One would hope the military is upping precautions after a jetliner vanished out of thin air, but as you said, we have let our guard down some.

[Overflow]

Originally Posted by FenwickHockey65

One would hope the military is upping precautions after a jetliner vanished out of thin air, but as you said, we have let our guard down some.

After 9/11, we know that they wouldn't take those precautions.

[Mr_Draco]

Originally Posted by ChrisBlair

In either case, I have to assume that all people on board have been dead for some time :(

This is my thought as well. It's been a week. If the plane didn't crash and was hijacked, the hijackers have no reason or purpose to keep hundreds of bystanders alive for so long. People who are capable and willing to go through such lengths to secure a plane to use aren't going to go through the hassle of securing enough food, water, and shelter to keep all those people alive. Sadly, those people were most likely killed shortly after the plane landed. The more people kept alive, the greater the chances are of your secret and plans getting out.

[Overflow]

Well.. This concludes the ninth day since the plane has gone missing and still no sign of the jet.

[SSE 4 2SS]

I'm thinking in the grand scheme of doom and gloom, it wouldn't be so hard to fly even a large commercial airliner into the US with evil intent...

So, it's been stolen and landed somewhere... Say a country friendly to the cause... The identity of the aircraft is changed... And it's refueled... Then it's flown to another country friendly to the cause... Refueled, and again strikes out... Now with a full fuel system... It flys out of the way of known airline routes... Off of radar coverage, then hundreds of miles out ito sea or in mountainous terrain it goes low level... Flying into another country, say south of its intended target... A country with poor radar coverage at best, and hides in mountainous terrain until crossing into the country of intended destination... Or from the second country it is now a known flight on known carrier routes, pinging the proper transponder codes...

A novel idea, but a plausible one... There are groups that hate other groups and have the financial backing to grease the skids for about anything...

Just food for thought...

[tc Bosnian]

Abducted by the Aliens!!!!