“The only limit will be the imaginations of millions.”
You can sit anywhere you can see a runway and fly a model airplane into a jet taking off. After a while you’ll get good enough to get it into the suction stream of an engine. That would kill an engine. Now, add a bit of explosive.
Nobody wants to even think about things like this because they can’t be easily or cheaply defended against. It’s like using airplanes as guided bombs. Authorities knew this was on terrorist’s minds ten years before 911 because they almost did it to the Eiffel tower. The plot was stopped by an alert Arabic speaking passenger who overheard and alerted the crew to the plan.
No action was taken simply because normalcy bias made the expense of guarding against it unacceptable. Until, it had already happened. Then we ended up with TSA; a race horse designed by a committee.
Such things will happen. We can mostly hope that those who resort to such uses will be few and far between. Of course, we can count on terrorists to make some destructive use of small drones.
“You can sit anywhere you can see a runway and fly a model airplane into a jet taking off. After a while you’ll get good enough to get it into the suction stream of an engine. That would kill an engine. Now, add a bit of explosive.”
I vaguely knew a guy in high school back in the 1970’s whose family farm was near the edge of DFW airport. He got drunk in his pickup and started trying to shoot out the running lights of aircraft that were taking off. He must have gotten close enough with a shot that someone noticed because the county sheriffs and Grapevine city police were there pretty fast
He might be out of jail by now
Very good show on this and the French rescue of the hostages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur1zHsGEvs8