Pilots report "guy in a jet pack" at 3K feet above LAX (1 Viewer)

Actually, I do think the plane does have safeguards in the event a tank catches fire. I remember seeing it on a show somewhere that prevented tanks from exploding, but i can't recall how it worked though.

An incidiary round directly impacting the tank might still do the trick. Not sure though.
A highly trained terrorist with an fully automatic weapon and trained in using jet pack technology, simply would have to take out a cockpit window with loss of cabin pressure and wind at about 200mph flying in, and it would be game over. It does not have to be shooting at a wing, or an engine. Big birds (geese; flocks) crashing into cockpit windshields are a huge concern. Broken glass and a loss of visual, is enough of a problem and could be catastrophic.

The concern is, taking out the brains of the airplane.
 
No one ever envisioned commercial jet planes being used as weapons either.

Before 9-11 The USS Cole was severely damaged by a rubber raft loaded with C4. My brother in law retired from the Navy a few
years before this attack.. I asked him how this could have happened. He said we aren't designed to defend against low tech
weaponry. No one at the time expected a small fishing vessel to attack a Navy destroyer.
 
I’m thinking that a drone rigged with a gun capable of firing a single armor piercing incendiary round straight down into the wing of a plane fully loaded with fuel while it’s preparing for takeoff might do the trick.

Hopefully smarter people than me have already thought of that and installed some kind of safeguard against it, now that I think about it.

A hand full of scrap steel in the intake of a jet engine would be pretty catastrophic as would a single round from a 45 into the window of a pressurized cabin.
 
Harder to track. Additionally, you need a very small footprint to launch from. Could be from anywhere at any time and swift. So with you being confused, I guess you do not see the problem with drones. Jet pack technology is faster technology. If you cannot see the advantages a person of malicious intent would have with this, I cannot help you. Just another evolution of technology. Oh, and by the way. You may want to ask the FBI. They obviously have some real concerns. 😎

Yeah, well, while you are wringing your hands about jetpacks, I have to remind you that all it takes is a pressure cooker, fireworks, and nails to construct something that can wipe a bunch of people out. You can come up with thousands of ways to commit a terrorist attack, the real key is concentrating the efforts on tracking the people crazy and sinister enough to do something terrible rather than trying to prevent all the possible ways that they could do it.
 
So I asked my (retired) pilot dad - 24 years as a KC-135 pilot and another 25 as a 747 pilot for Northwest Airlines) about jet pack attacks

After he finished laughing, he said the hardest part for the “packer” would be interception. Creating the vector on the fly to intercept a moving target going that fast is beyond a humans capability. Essentially anything you fire at the plane would need you to be able to do high math while still maintaining their own flight path.

But assuming that they wouldn’t be able to do that you would have to match the speed and path of the aircraft. Which isn’t possible with such a small engine.

So I asked about During takeoff and landing- when speeds are slower. The aircraft is still traveling well over two hundred miles an hour so you would need to match that and the vector of takeoff or landing depending.

So assuming you could go that fast and at that angle your biggest problem becomes “jet wash” from the engines. Since the craft is slower, more shear thrust is needed to keep the plane in the sky. This creates massive turbulence that would shake a Packer apart or suck them into the intake.

it was then he asked why I was bothering him with this and we switched to football. He’s a Bengals fan so he hopes the season is cancelled so they can have their most successful season in years.
 
So I asked my (retired) pilot dad - 24 years as a KC-135 pilot and another 25 as a 747 pilot for Northwest Airlines) about jet pack attacks

After he finished laughing, he said the hardest part for the “packer” would be interception. Creating the vector on the fly to intercept a moving target going that fast is beyond a humans capability. Essentially anything you fire at the plane would need you to be able to do high math while still maintaining their own flight path.

But assuming that they wouldn’t be able to do that you would have to match the speed and path of the aircraft. Which isn’t possible with such a small engine.

So I asked about During takeoff and landing- when speeds are slower. The aircraft is still traveling well over two hundred miles an hour so you would need to match that and the vector of takeoff or landing depending.

So assuming you could go that fast and at that angle your biggest problem becomes “jet wash” from the engines. Since the craft is slower, more shear thrust is needed to keep the plane in the sky. This creates massive turbulence that would shake a Packer apart or suck them into the intake.

it was then he asked why I was bothering him with this and we switched to football. He’s a Bengals fan so he hopes the season is cancelled so they can have their most successful season in years.

You should have just sent him to this thread and told him just a handful of guys spitballing about jet packs with too much time on their hands. :hihi:

And, what about the 2 guys flying right next to the airliner? While attacking and flying next to it are two different things, those high powered packs seem to have enough speed to keep up.
 
You should have just sent him to this thread and told him just a handful of guys spitballing about jet packs with too much time on their hands. :hihi:

And, what about the 2 guys flying right next to the airliner? While attacking and flying next to it are two different things, those high powered packs seem to have enough speed to keep up.

So that was a promo video - with an Emirates A-380. If it was empty (presume it was), it appears that plane can stay in the sky at as slow as 130 kts. I think we can assume those jet guys were going at least 130 knots, perhaps faster. But I don’t think they can keep up with a 380 at cruising speed.



 

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