Posted on 11/28/2005 4:49:25 AM PST by texianyankee
Sounds very interesting. BTTT for future reading.
Hope you and your loved ones had a good Thanksgiving.
Speaking of which... did they ever finish retro-fitting ALL the center fuel tanks on those jets? - no? probably because they know damm well that was a false story...
How do I know? I am one of the few people here on Free Republic who SAW WITH MY OWN EYES a video tape (the 'cocktail party' video) showing a missile streaking upwards and then the explosion. SAW IT on TV WITH MY OWN EYES FOLKS!!!
CNNNBCCBS all pulled that story immediately and it was never heard from again.
If you feel your quotes from Kerry and Stephanopoulos are too outdated, here's one from 2005 from Leon Panetta:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1499976/posts
And while no one has so much as broken a nail because of the nose gear issue, hundreds have been killed because of exploding fuel tanks and, according to the FAA's proposed AD, more such calamities are "virtually certain to occur."
The agency has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will not require the installation of specific hardware to address fuel-tank explosions, but rather will set flammability standards for the ullage, the space in the tank not occupied by fuel.
It will be up to manufacturers and airlines to meet those standards, something the FAA says was not thought practical a few years ago but which is now economically viable.
The most likely method of making the tanks explosion-proof is by displacing oxygen in the ullage with inert gases.
The system developed by the FAA and industry passes compressed air through a membrane that separates nitrogen and pumps it into the tanks, preventing combustion.
The agency and industry jointly researched such systems and Boeing has since applied for certification of a system it intends to install on all its new 747s.
The focus used to be on eliminating sources of ignition but the NPRM says it's not likely that can be accomplished.
If something isn't done, the FAA's computer models suggest that over the next 50 years fuel-tank explosions would claim at least nine aircraft.
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/517-full.html#191059
How much you wanna bet that the in flight recorder / "black box" mysteriously vanished as soon as the aircraft involved touched down and rolled to a stop at the gate.
I wonder if the tower radar picked anything up?
If indeed it turns out that Jihaddists are lurking in the hills underneath regular approach or departation flight paths of airliners with portable G-A missles, look for the initiation of 360-degree overhead landing protocol.
That's where you fly over the runway at about 8K ft., peel over on one wing, and do a spiraling nose-dive down the the runway, pulling out (hopefully) just in time to land ahead of any hostile fire.
And as nearly anyone who has flown in VietNam can tell you - it's one helluvva ride!
I appreciate the Panetta quote as I had missed your original thread. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at the office viewing a small tv with rabbit ears. I watched live as Stephanoploulos made him TWA800 comment. It was somewhat panicky, hurried, and definitely unscripted. For the first time in the boy's life, he was telling the truth.
Call the station and ask?
You're kidding, right?
AKA Wile E. Coyote. ;-)
On the Fourth WWIII breaks out in my neighborhood in Chicago where fireworks are illegal. One only wonders what it would be like if they were legal. And we are talking about the big car alarm inciters too very loud explosives.
Radioproducer from the Tony Snow radio show said she is going to call the station to check out the story.
Glad those two were this dumb. Were I a wiley Al Qaeda terrorist I'd just go directly to China and buy the stuff, then figure out some way to sneak it into the USA. None of this brokering business on US soil.
This is my second posting of this article. On my previous post I don't think I excerpted it enough. Thanks.Los Angeles Times
By Peter Pae, Times Staff Writer
November 17, 2005
"…The timing of Northrop's public relations event could not have been better. Hours earlier a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted two men on charges of conspiring to smuggle as many as 200 shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles into the U.S. Both men, naturalized U.S. citizens of Chinese descent living in Los Angeles, allegedly tried to broker the sale of Chinese-made QW-2 missiles to undercover FBI agents.
The case is the second involving covert sales of shoulder-fired missiles. A British arms dealer was convicted this year in New Jersey of attempting to broker a deal to sell 200 Russian surface-to-air missiles to an East African terrorist group he thought would use them to shoot down commercial airliners in the U.S.
The cases have renewed attention on efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to protect airlines from portable surface-to-air missiles.
>> Snip >>
The Department of Homeland Security has warned of the widespread availability of portable weapons and that terrorists could use them to shoot down jetliners.
"Airplanes approaching LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] are particularly vulnerable because they are flying over mountains" as they descend, said Jack Pledger, head of the Northrop unit that developed the system.
Thus far, no U.S. passenger plane has been downed by a shoulder-fired missile outside of a combat zone. But 35 foreign civilian aircraft, many in war-torn parts of Africa, have been attacked with shoulder-fired missiles, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Of those, two dozen were shot down, killing 640 people.
And terrorists linked with Al Qaeda are believed to have fired two portable surface-to-air missiles that narrowly missed hitting an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Kenya in 2002…"
End of excerpt. Read the rest of the story: Airliner Defense System Displayed
Another disturbed young man (probably a white christian). Nothing here.......please move on.
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