airliner missile defense: grounded due to costs

Lot cheaper than lasers - especially since a stalled SUV is way too dumb to figure out that its heat-seeker is getting spoofed... you'd need a big enough laser to actually melt it out of the way fast enough to do the train any good. One of those electric-powered Gatling guns they have on helicopters might do the job a lot quicker, with far less power input... you could most likely operate _that_ from the diesel-electric power system. A big laser would need its own energy source. :)

-dave w

The turret seems unnecessary though, realistically, you would only need to clear the tracks directly ahead of you. How about a forward firing

I thought that would work for the airlines too.

Just a couple of turrets on a 747 would help and you wouldn't need all the expensive stuff that's on Air Force One. ; )

Randy

I didn't say THAT. But some sufficiently-paranoid bureaucrat can mistake our musings for actual ideas... or just use our banter to score political points at our expense.

I'm not suggesting that we shut up about it - I *am* suggesting that we shouldn't be surprised that others might find it a bit unsettling. :-)

Why not go with a low-tech solution...? A 'leading' locomotive, not carrying any passengers or cargo, equipped with a simple cow-catcher. It travels ahead of the 'main' train, shoving potentially-damaging things out of the way. :-)

Actually, that is the simple solution, or let the engine pull the train, but where would the excitement be in that?

I think the BATF would like the missile idea best, they've already been able to prove they're a danger to ground targets using our motors. ;-) Though the gatling would be good too, as massive as a locomotive is it wouldn't have the recoil problems of airborne units.

But for the traditionalists out there....cow-catchers!

Chuck

And think of the nostalgia kick it could start! 747's made up to look like B-17's!! Could save alot of time at the airports too. Don't land to disembark, just open the bay doors and............

Chuck

Well, I wasn't posting anything that terrorists couldn't have thought of themselves. Surely these guys pay attention to the news, and take notice of incidents such as the train derailment that could be reproduced on a wider scale. And I wouldn't go into some of the easier ways to derail trains, though even those are probably fairly obvious. 

anticipate potential vulnerabilities (in hopes that identifying them might enable them to be secured), but to sit in quiet fear and "try not to give them any ideas"?

our musings for actual ideas... or just use our banter to score political points at our expense.

shouldn't be surprised that others might find it a bit unsettling. :-)

Been there and still doing that. I was sitting in a local pub remarking about how stupid all this fashionable paranoia is when any amatuer with $10 could go into a grocery store, then stop at a gas station on the way back home, to then have both all the parts needed for homebrew WMD's and change in their pocket. When challenged by another patron, figuring I was being an anal ventriloquist (talking out my ass), I told him what could be created. He got this frightened "is Big Brother watching?!" look and told me to be quiet before someone reported me. The capper was the guy on the other side of him then popped up with some ideas I'd left out. The world has changed, it use to be that the only reason to take lab in school was to make some illegal explosives for the heck of it and because we shouldn't. The only time the school ever got evacuated was when some goodie goodie was doing what they should have and it went waaaaay wrong. ;-)

Chuck

LOL!!

carrying any passengers or cargo, equipped with a simple cow-catcher. It travels ahead of the 'main' train, shoving potentially-damaging things out of the way. :-)

Ahhhh, I got beat to the punch on this one!

Chuck

carrying any passengers or cargo, equipped with a simple cow-catcher. It travels ahead of the 'main' train, shoving potentially-damaging things out of the way. :-)

Serves you right for beating me on Young Frankenstein!

David Erbas-White

True enough... but I was thinking more along the lines of the eager young Federal Agent. Looking to make a name for himself, he sees what we're talking about and over-reacts. He looks like a hero for pointing out this 'potential terrorist think-tank', and we get branded for aiding-and-abetting.

Well... it takes some of us less time to hit on brilliant ideas than others. ;-)

I think we should sell HPR rockets to the train people and let them use them to target and blow up the SUV's on the tracks....

now the really funny and sad thing is the BATFE will think the above could actually work....

shockie B)

The situation is 100% political and 0% science.

small

Technically three trains since the parked one was damaged and disabled as well.

Maybe so, but the Homeland Security department itself has been doing that IN PUBLIC (mass-media) for years now.

rmr is clearly an obscure culda-sack on the internet.

Jerry