Aircraft Locator a "Terrorist's Dream"
The movie plots keep coming and coming. Here’s my nomination for dumb movie plot of this week:
Skies ‘now terrorist’s dream’
Australia’s proposed new aviation tracking system would make it easier for terrorists to locate aircraft, aviation campaigner Dick Smith said today.
Mr Smith said a plan by Airservices Australia to replace radar tracking of planes with the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS B) system would allow terrorists to track every aircraft in the sky.
“Government policy using conventional radar makes it almost impossible for a terrorist or a criminal to locate the position and identity of an aircraft,” Mr Smith said.
“With ADS B it’s the opposite because all you need to track every aircraft is a small, non-directional aerial, worth $5.”
Under the present system, a terrorist can locate the position of an aircraft by looking up. And if a terrorist is smart enough to perform this intelligence-gathering exercise near an airport, he can locate the position of aircraft that are low to the ground, and easier to shoot at with missiles. Why are we worrying about telling terrorists where all the high-altitude hard-to-hit planes are?
Now I can invent a movie plot that has the terrorists needing to shoot down a particular plane because this or that famous personage is on it, but that’s a bit much.
Tom • May 29, 2006 1:19 PM
If the terrorist is near an airport, he can locate the position of aircraft that are low to the ground with his eyes.