Monday - September 26, 2011

Fails the sniff test

Lots and lots of coverage around the blogosphere of NYPD Chief Ray Kelly’s statement on 60 Minutes that his cops could “take down” an airliner if necessary ...

NEW YORK — The chief of the New York Police Department says city police could take down a plane if needed.

Commissioner Ray Kelly tells CBS’ “60 Minutes” that after the Sept. 11 attacks, he decided the city couldn’t rely on the federal government alone. He set about creating the NYPD’s own counter-terrorism unit. He says the department is prepared for multiple scenarios and could even take down a plane.

Tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes featured a segment on one of the world’s most sophisticated anti-terrorism units--the New York City Police Department. Over the past decade, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly (and the city) have spent $3 billion on measures designed to prevent or mitigate future attacks.
...
Pelley: Are you satisfied that you’ve dealt with threats from aircraft, even light planes, model planes, that kind of thing?

Kelly: Well, it’s something that’s on our radar screen. I mean in an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane.

Pelley: Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?

Kelly: Yes, I prefer not to get into the details but obviously this would be in a very extreme situation.

Pelley: You have the equipment and the training.

Kelly: Yes.

Speculation on this statement has run the gamut from it’s pure BS to they have either Avenger missile launchers (packs of Stingers mounted on Humvees) or else MANPADS (shoulder launched Stingers). Another blog says all of that is nonsense, because what they have is Barrett .50 rifles, and will shoot down the airliners from helicopters.

I say phooey to the whole thing. [Insert my standard rant about the over-militarization of the police here]

• Shooting a bullet at a jetliner, even if it’s a big bullet, is not going to do it. Even if it’s a really “long range” kind of gun, we’re still talking no more than two miles at the very most. 10,000 feet; an altitude that’s miles lower than such aircraft normally fly at. And the speed difference between even a really slow jet and a really fast helicopter is enormous. being on the order of at least 200mph. Which is about 300 feet per second, a good deal longer than the plane itself. That means leading your target by more than it’s own length, which makes a precise hit a very iffy thing. Too much deflection, too easy to take evasive action, too small a chance of making the precise hit necessary.
  
  


• Stinger missiles, whether MANPAD launched or fired from a mobile battery or even from a helicopter, are just too short range to save your bacon properly. Drag out your 30-60-90 drawing triangle, or resurrect your trig knowledge from that long ago math class and recall the 3-4-5 right triangle. The best and latest Stinger missile has a range of just 5 miles. 5 miles is the hypotenuse when the target is 3 miles away and 4 miles (20,000 feet) up, or when it’s 4 miles away and 3 miles up (almost 16,000 feet).
  
  Now, while it may be true - may be - that the 5 or 6 pounds worth of explosive would be enough to force a big jet to crash (after all, look what just one hand grenade can do to a DC-3. A grenade weighs about a pound) the problem is that the crashing airliner is still there, up in the sky, crashing. Right at you. Even if the missile blows the plane into 6 big chunks, those chunks are still moving forward at 500mph from an altitude of several miles. In other words, the plane may not hit it’s intended target, but it’s gonna make a helluva mess for someone on the ground, somewhere nearby. The only safe solution is to blow it out of the sky a long, long way away.

So the practical answer must be that the air defense tool involved is a bigger missile. Something on the order of a AIM-120 or greater, either in the air version (AMRAAM) or the ground version (SLAMRAAM). Perhaps go even larger, with the leftover old Hawk missiles gathering dust in warehouses, or some Patriot batteries. Not only do these kinds of missiles have much greater range (30 - 50 miles or more) they pack much more bang, having about the same explosive and fragmentation power as a 120mm to 155mm artillery shell ... which is plenty (50 - 80lbs). So the pieces will be much smaller, and they’ll fall much further away. Somewhere out past the end of Long Island, or 20 miles off the New Jersey shore would be just about right.

And all of this leads back to the question of the day, just what the EFF kind of police departments have we built in this country? Hardware of this magnitude has NEVER been in civilian hands before. Nor has launch authority. If Commissioner Kelly isn’t lying out his sphincter, and he does have such equipment AND the authority to deploy it ... then we have a cop with warlord like powers. If so, someone has made a huge mistake.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for air defenses around our cities. It makes sense. Heck, they used to be there; once upon a time (up to 1972) nearly two dozen anti-aircraft missile bases surrounded New York City, including one within the confines of the city proper, not 2 miles from the Bronx Zoo. Armed with nukes!  But these were all under the control of the Army, not the mayor of the city or his top cop. Has the chain of command been thrown out the window and flushed down the toilet? It would seem it must have been. I can see no other possible way that Kelly’s statement can possibly be true. What’s next for the NYPD, their own nuclear submarines? Private air craft carries? A battalion or two of tanks? His own little air force of AT-6s armed with air to air missiles? Too damn much power IMO. We have an excellent military. Defending the nation against our enemies is their job. Let them do it, and keep the plod out of it.

Besides, as I’ve said, the place to make an interception is long before the bits and pieces left afterwards can crash down on your head. That means that the threat has to be determined and validated, and the interception decision made, long before it gets near Commissioner Kelly and his blue crewed AA batteries. Which means that the local Air Force bases will have plenty of time to sortie every jet fighter they have on nearly suicidal intercept missions. So if it REALLY comes down to it, by the time the cops are shooting at jet airliners, it’s already too damn late. Might as well stand on the roof and throw rocks or shoot off bottle rockets. In other words, giving the NYPD anti-aircraft weaponry and launch authority is yet another waste of millions of dollars, and another “let no crisis go to waste” usurpation of power.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/26/2011 at 03:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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