Malaysian Air flight shot down over Ukraine with 295 aboard.

[GScholz]

Not for very much longer I think.

The western world hasn't fought a real war for ages. When military victory is all but guaranteed political consideration comes into play, like avoiding civilian casualties. In the Ukraine however, they are fighting for real.

[zack1234]

I do not endorse hugging trees. Progress is ongoing whether you like it or not. Get with the programme and make a contribution, you pessimistic stuffy old farts 

Progress?.

What are you talking about?.

These Eastern European countries are still fighting wars started in 1570, like the Irish their culture is based on fighting the english

Reactionary is the word Shida not progress

London most spoken language now not English, this is what progress is Shida

[Serenity]

Well, we can only hope there are enough Boeing 727s still in service then we can call them the DB Cooper paratroop brigade. Is it actually possible to paratroop from the side doors of an airliner? 'Converting' them to have a bomb bay also doesn't seem viable to me. Additionally couldn't you identify a parachute drop by altitude and flightpath?

Perhaps it's the nature of this forum but I'm interested to note that most objections to such a system aren't about protecting civilian aircraft but making sure the weapon is still effective against aggressors. It's not as if SAMs are the only way to remove an aggressive aircraft. Wouldn't you rather let the 1 in 1,000,000 aircraft go to be dealt with by other defense systems that are more discriminating and avoid loss of civilian life?

Russian paratroopers jump from Il-76s. The same can be done from a 767. And adding a bomb-bay can be very easy, so long as you aren't interested in making it pretty. A hack-saw and some hydraulics can get the job done while still confusing missile systems into thinking it's a civilian airplane. The line between a tool and a weapon lies only in its application.

We do focus, primarily on weapon effectiveness, because it's absolutely necessary. It doesn't matter how 'safe' a weapon is, if it's not effective, because a weapon that is not effective will not be employed, thus making all of the advances in safety useless. Additionally, as a warfighter, there are easier ways to solve this problem on the individual level. The Vincennes is coming up a lot in the middle of this, and it's a great learning experience. It was equally tragic, and honestly, I see it as the same situation. Someone on the ground was trigger-happy, they mis-identified their target, and launched a weapon that should have never been used. Sure, you can try to develop a smarter missile, but the better answer is to develop a smarter shooter. Even before this, we went over the case-study of the Vincennes at least once a year, tearing it apart, inside and out, and writing papers on how to avoid making that same mistake. THAT is the way forward. You can only change the world so much by changing objects. People need to be changed to make a real difference.

[GScholz]

The unpressurized cargo holds of airliners are easily converted to weapons bays. The U.S. Navy's new P-8 Poseidon is just a Boeing 737 with an internal weapons bay and wing hardpoints. It's predecessor the P-3 Orion was just a Lockheed Electra, old turboprop airliner.

[Serenity]

The U.S. Navy's new P-8 Poseidon is just a Boeing 737 with an internal weapons bay and wing hardpoints. It's predecessor the P-3 Orion was just a Lockheed Electra, old turboprop airliner.

(Image removed from quote.)

Thank you! Man, I'm horribly disappointed that I of all people didn't come up with this example myself.

[GScholz]

Incidentally the P-8 Poseidon's great ancestor, the first real maritime reconnaissance bomber was also a converted airliner.

[GScholz]

During the Cold War the Soviets even had glazed noses on their airliners so they could quickly be modified to bombers if the war became hot.

[Puma44]

The unpressurized cargo holds of airliners are easily converted to weapons bays. The U.S. Navy's new P-8 Poseidon is just a Boeing 737 with an internal weapons bay and wing hardpoints. It's predecessor the P-3 Orion was just a Lockheed Electra, old turboprop airliner.

(Image removed from quote.)

Where exactly is the internal weapons bay?

[GScholz]

Behind the wing, right under the U.S. insignia and "NAVY". The doors are open and there's a torpedo under it.


Better view:

[Puma44]

Behind the wing, right under the U.S. insignia and "NAVY". The doors are open and there's a torpedo under it.


Better view:

(Image removed from quote.)

Interesting, an angry 73!  Thanks, good picture.

[Vulcan]

The unpressurized cargo holds of airliners are easily converted to weapons bays. The U.S. Navy's new P-8 Poseidon is just a Boeing 737 with an internal weapons bay and wing hardpoints. It's predecessor the P-3 Orion was just a Lockheed Electra, old turboprop airliner.

The worlds first jetliner was also converted into an ASW platform and was active from 1969 to 2011.

[nrshida]

Russian paratroopers jump from Il-76s. The same can be done from a 767. And adding a bomb-bay can be very easy, so long as you aren't interested in making it pretty. A hack-saw and some hydraulics can get the job done while still confusing missile systems into thinking it's a civilian airplane.

Doesn't the Il-76 have a ramp even the commercial version? I don't think you can actually open the doors of a commercial airliner with the motors running as they are plug doors and rely on pressure difference to keep them closed. Even if you modified one so it could as I suggested before a commercial airliner flying low and slow when not approaching an airport is immediately suspicious so I fail to see the advantage.

The P-8 Poseidon was modified by a division of Boeing itself and the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 was probably designed right from its early stages with provision for military 'conversion' as a workaround for the Treaty of Versailles and was again converted by an aircraft company, not some A Team with hacksaws and a MIG welder.

The line between a tool and a weapon lies only in its application.

Respectfully Serenity this is the sort of unthinking idiotic sound bite I'd expect to hear from some moron trying to protect his right to own a 50 calibre machine gun on his farm. To what other purpose can a SAM or a Colt 45 be applied? Almost anything can be employed as a weapon and yet presently the most popularly supported option seems to be to get an actual weapon.

We do focus, primarily on weapon effectiveness, because it's absolutely necessary.

Has the idolatry of power and weapons reached such a point that they are in some way sacred from the incorporation of a mechanism to make them ineffective against targets they were never intended to destroy? What about anti-personal mines? What if they had a secured coded short-range signal where you could set them off in situ after the conflict is over? Is that unacceptable because of the infinitesimal chance the enemy could crack or intercept the codes and neutralize them before that point? Do you object to such an idea as (former?) military personnel?

What about the Geneva Convention and Hors de combat? Don't these rules / laws pertain to the ethics of confining casualties to combatants? In the case of flight mh 17 an indiscriminating fire and forget weapon is thoughtlessly launched against a totally civilian target, an airliner - not incidental casualties, not an overspill from a legitimate target - and destroys it and you are telling me with conviction that it's unfortunate but more important that the weapon destroys whatever it is fired at? You can't even discuss such possibilities without being shouted down?

THAT is the way forward. You can only change the world so much by changing objects. People need to be changed to make a real difference.

No I'm sorry I disagree with this to the very core. In all other domains of human problem solving BOTH approaches are being taken in harmony.

[GScholz]

You don't need to pressurize the cabin. Unpressurized, opening the doors in flight is not a problem. Unlike other German aircraft that were designed clandestinely for military purposes the Fw 200 is not one of them. The Fw 200 was designed specifically as a transatlantic airliner. The Buk SAM system is not a "indiscriminating fire and forget weapon"; the missile needs to be guided all the way to the target by the launch vehicle and its crew. They could have aborted the interception at any time before impact had they realized their mistake.

As for your "not some A Team with hacksaws and a MIG welder" comment: It's pretty irrelevant. The fact is that all modern militaries use airliners in one form or another for military purposes. They don't even have to be modified at all; in the most basic military application an airliner, like its oceangoing counterparts, can be used as troop transports. In my real-life example the Bulgarian Airlines Tu-154 in which I was transported to a war zone was a perfectly legal military target, despite the fact that the day before it was probably flying tourists to some holiday resort somewhere. The US military uses FedEx and DHL as transport subcontractors; one DHL Airbus was almost shot down in Iraq. The fact you seem to want to avoid is that in war many "civilian" vehicles and indeed the "civilians" who operate them are perfectly legal military targets in their own right. You don't need to carry a gun or a uniform to contribute to the war effort.

[GScholz]

Delta Airlines transporting US soldiers deploying to Iraq:




Perfectly legal target.

[nrshida]

You don't need to pressurize the cabin. Unpressurized, opening the doors in flight is not a problem.

Something else was bothering me about the DB Cooper parachute brigade idea. Out of six airliners still in service quickly surveyed four have doors which open outwards. The DC10 and 767 might be possible but it isn't my idea in the first place and rather an absurd scenario I think.

The Condor and Buk corrections I bow to your superior knowledge of both since I'm not particularly interested in either but with the missile system is it really material to the incident? Once these knob-heads pressed the fire button is it likely they used the interim time to reconsider their decision or concentrate on guiding to target? Doesn't matter how you divide the system in the end the holistic system was indiscriminate.

Delta Airlines transporting US soldiers deploying to Iraq:

(Image removed from quote.)


Perfectly legal target.

And for all those legal targets, what is the proportion of military personal who have been killed in transit to the battlefield compared to civilians who have been killed by these weapons systems who were not?