“This allows each engine of that specific airframe to be targeted by terrorists.”
Not really Load weight determines the speed of acceleration and a terrorist would need to know the weight and takeoff performance of the aircraft to know when the aircraft will be at a specific point and the terrorist would need to know the acceleration and performance characteristics of their weapon to get the weapon and the engine to be at the same place at the same time. Sorry, but implausible.
If you were to video a the same scheduled airliner for two weeks you would have a darn good idea of where his V1 and VR points on the runway will be.
“Not really Load weight determines the speed of acceleration and a terrorist would need to know the weight and takeoff performance of the aircraft to know when the aircraft will be at a specific point and the terrorist would need to know the acceleration and performance characteristics of their weapon to get the weapon and the engine to be at the same place at the same time.”
I disagree strongly. BTW, three out of four of the 9-11 attacks using three separate “implausible” strategies were successful.
I guarantees that if you go to an airport where the same fully loaded 747 (passengers, cargo and fuel) takes off every day on a regularly scheduled flight, the V1-VR zone for the take-off.
This blog post was written a year ago and the new capabilities of minicopters hadn’t been fully apparent to me so, yes I was contemplating terrorist use of model jet turbine aircraft to make an attack which requires calculating trying to get the drone to the RKZ and the same time the airliner arrives there, but...
...mini-copter can be instructed to proceed to a three-dimensional waypoint in the runway path of an engine and just sit there waiting for the engine to come speeding down the runway to collide with it. It would have no radar return and could be hidden in grass nearby and instructed to pop-up and go to the waypoint at the last minute, for example.