Comment by Taniwha
Comment by Taniwha 3 days ago
They were lucky someone wasn't carrying one on a plane
Comment by Taniwha 3 days ago
They were lucky someone wasn't carrying one on a plane
Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of a turbine fan blade taking out a window, the case where the MAX door panel blew off, the cases where the cargo door came off, and the 737 "convertible" case. You'd have to take out a large part of the structure to bring it down.
Take a look at all the photos of B-17s taking severe combat damage yet returning home. Jetliners are a lot more redundant today than the B-17s were.
However, if the hole took out the flight controls, or set a fire, then the airplane has a big problem.
In some of the cases you mentioned, there were passenger deaths due to being ejected from the aircraft. I'm on mobile or I'd link exactly which incidents but I remember at least two cases from when I was bored in a lecture and read through most of Wikipedia's "list of deaths in aircraft incidents" list or whatever it's called
Yes, there are passenger deaths from some of those incidents. But the plane wasn't brought down.
>Poking holes in the fuselage of a jetliner isn't going to take down a plane. Consider the cases of
These are all fake news. According to Hollywood, a single bullet from a gun will cause an airplane to break apart in mid-air. You can't honestly expect me to believe Hollywood movies get physics wrong.
Similarly, as soon as a car's wheels leave the ground, it bursts into a fireball according to many TV shows I've seen.
/s
Naturally the close quarters will results in multiple people being harmed. The question is more about the physics and if the explosives has enough penetrating power to go through the walls of the plane.
The bigger risk to the plane (and passengers) would likely be if the person carrying the explosive was working in the airport and the explosion occurred during a critical moment, like when a pilot is taxiing.
Most of the flight would be out of range and I’m not even sure that explosion would take out a plane. Plus it would probably be powered off because Hezbollah is serious about flight safety.
I wouldn’t want to be near it anywhere so what’s the difference between a plane and a grocery store?
The comment implied Israel was risking blowing up an entire plane when we were discussing whether it was targeted or not.
Go play in the other room, the grownups are talking.
My understanding is that pagers are typically radio Rx-only, and that it is not possible to track their location like a cellular device -- which is likely why Hezbollah chose to use them.
Though it would be possible to add this ability when the hardware was intercepted, a transmitting device is also easy to detect.
Two way pagers have been a thing since the 90s. You're limited to replying with a very short alphanumeric message.
That said, pagers don't continuously ping the tower like cell phones do. They can stay receive only until the moment you chose to send a message.
The AR924's in question are POCSAG pagers; broadcast from base stations and receive only at the pager end. Two way pagers are a thing but use an entirely different protocol for communications.
From what I can find, the targeted pager-model can receive UHF messages in the 450~470MHz range. That could reach passenger jet cruise altitudes if the transmitter is strong enough.
I think it's safest to assume Hezbollah are using strong transmitters, because they'll want to be able to broadcast across rather large areas and in a way that resists potential jamming.
On the flip side, I'm having a hard time imagining these as threats to an entire airplane, given the tight constraints on how much explosive power can be secretly snuck into a functioning pager.
Penetration of 450-480MHz through the shell of an airplane would, on the ground,require a transmission strength of approximately .4dB/m at a distance of 1 kilometer, which is doable by most measures, but would quickly become unrealistic as the plane gained altitude.
I wonder if it would endanger the plane. A 20g explosive sitting in the pocket of a person will clearly cause serious injury, but I am unsure if it has penetration power to actually go through the plane body. I am reminded of mythbusters experiments with small amount of explosives to block up doors, but I don't recall how much they needed in the end.