Dark Rantings

The lame and stupid "Defense Zone" meant solely to save the shrub's butt has again been shown to be completely and utterly impotent as some poor dumbass, likely taking off from after the Frederick, MD air show last night, busted the defense zone, scrambling F-16s whose afterburners blasted over my house. As happens SO often, the jets lost their quarry, and the hapless nincompoop escaped with his pilots certificate intact.

Before counting up the amount of money in jet fuel alone spent on protecting us from some poor fool in a 4 seat aircraft, think about the stupidity of the whole operation. How long does it take to fly a small plane doing about 110 knots per hour from let's say Gaithersburg, MD to the White House? Eyeballing it off the sectional, looks like 17 nautical miles. So, let's estimate how long it would take to get there in a 172... Figure maybe a 2 NM climb out at 60 kph, 2 minutes there. Then we need to go 14 NM more at about 110 KPH 7.6 more minutes. Then about 1 minute for a dive. Total time, 10.6 minutes.

Let's see....can you get a pilot from wherever he happens to be, to an aircraft sitting on the ground, get that aircraft started, taxi it to the runway, talk to the tower to make sure that nobody else is coming in or going out that you might hit, take off as quickly as you can, find where the aircraft happens to be, distinguishing it from the Cessna 206 operated by an unnamed agency that flies over the White House often enough to be spotted by many individuals, attempt an intercept, and then shoot it down if the aircraft does not comply in less than 10.6 minutes. I think NOT.

It would take even LONGER to figure out if the pilot complies with the ADIZ instructions and gets a discrete squawk code before taking off. In the ADIZ, anything that is already "ok" to be in the ADIZ isn't watched as closely until they deviate from their flight plan. So the same plane takes off, doesn't call anyone, but has a discrete squawk saying "I'm ok" to the controllers. The airplane turns toward the White House. The air traffic controller tries to contact the person. "Hey you....talk to me" for about 2 minutes, THEN notifies the guys who notify the pilots, THEN the pilot runs for their airplane.

So once again we have a stupid "band aid" security measure that does nothing for real security, and only makes the shrub feel better, like the double secret pop up temporary flight restictions 30 nautical miles around wherever the shrub happens to be campaigning. These "pop up" TFRs come up so quickly that pilots are often caught unaware and find their certificates rescinded because they didn't know that the president had targetted the area for campaigns.

Lame. Very very lame.