Techno Geek Help Needed! Anyone Know About Laser Guided Bombs?

[McCamy Taylor]

I was trying to think about how you would take down a private plane if the pilot is a skilled one who would do things they all do like check to make sure he has enough fuel and not accept food or drink from strangers. Shooting the plane down by nicking a wing so that it crashed seemed like best way to me.

I did a little research and found Laser Guided Bombs. It seems from what I have read that you have to be close enough to your target and it has to be clear weather for it to work. Coming in for a landing at an airport would make it close enough. I don't know what the weather was like, but you do not usually land a plane unless you can see at least the ground, even if you are flying IFR.

Here is a link about LGBs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser-guided_bomb

It says something about a "laser designator". Could someone have applied something to his plane before he took off, a marker of some sort that the laser would target? Could he have noticed these before and have aborted his flights?

My husband says if the wing was damaged as he was trying to land, he would have crashed. That would not have explained there being no explosion though. He would have had to be out of gas. Would one of these weapons be accurate enough to punch a hole in a fuel line without setting the gas on fire?

It stinks that the Bush administration is the one that gets to examine the plane.

[NJmaverick]

1. Laser guided bombs are used against ground targets

not airborne ones.

[Recursion]

2. Virtually impossible to hit a flying plane with a guided bomb

And the laser designator is a laser beam being directed by somebody on the ground at the target.

[anigbrowl]

3. No, no, a thousand times no

Bombs are dropped; while LGBs are guided (by tweaking the guinace fins) they still basically fall on things. To hit something in the air you would need a missile of some sort, in which case the plane would have blown up in the air.

"Would one of these weapons be accurate enough to punch a hole in a fuel line without setting the gas on fire? "

[laconicsax]

4. The answer is no.

Could someone have applied something to his plane before he took off, a marker of some sort that the laser would target?

No

Could he have noticed these before and have aborted his flights?

No

A laser designator is essentially a laser pointer that is either operated by someone on the ground or a warplane dropping a bomb.

Would one of these weapons be accurate enough to punch a hole in a fuel line without setting the gas on fire?

No.

They're usually only accurate to within a few meters of the intended target and make up the difference by being large, powerful explosives, in short, they're not accurate enough and too big to work.

[lurky]

5. Using a missile would leave a lot of evidence.

Plus, the shooter might get caught, people would probably notice the missile, it might miss the target, everyone would know it was the government, and so on. It would be a lot simpler and safer just to tamper with his plane. Maybe install a device to rupture his fuel supply at a certain time, altitude, or GPS location, or even by remote control. I'm sure professionals with access to his plane could do it in such a way that he wouldn't spot it.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. This is why I ask. We and technology are not friends. How about a satellite? Could it disrupt his

control panel? Or would it be too hard to pinpoint a fast moving target like a plane? I need to know these things, because I write science fiction.

Simplest explanations are still

1) someone put a hole in his gas tank and maybe plugged it with something like wax designed to melt when it warmed up a little and he was coming in for an emergency landing and did not make it

or 2) he committed suicide because they said they would kill his wife

Anyway you look at it, he is another one in the Bush Body Bag. We all knew that Ohio was being stolen on election morning 2004 when Ken Blackwell tried to keep the exit pollsters more than 100 feet from the polls. That is because any interference with exit polls meant that Blackwell expected a vote tabulation/exit poll discrepancy. So, I was not surprised at all when there was one and when Karen Hughes announced that W. had lost and left for Texas or when Rove assembled the Bush clan, who posed for the TV cameras, looking like deer pinned before the headlights. Even that Kid Bush knew that W. had lost and that Rove was trying to bullshit his way to a win.

Later, I discovered that at 100 feet, exit polls are useless.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x435597

And look at the states which have tried to make exit polls useless since then...

Minnesota

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/29909699.html

Florida and Nevada

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15226960/

These are weapons of mass destruction to our democracy.

[catnhatnh]

7. Okay, for fiction purposes only....

you know the aircraft and distance to be covered and you want it to run out of fuel....

You can't just drain fuel....that shows up on the gauge or gauges. You can't add water because water sinks to the bottom of the tank and pilots check drain sumps at the bottom of the tanks before each flight. What you can do is reduce the volume of the tank by introducing foreign objects into the tank to displace gasoline. The downside is foreign objects may be found in the tank and any object introduced must pass through a fuel cap...So drain a few gallons too much for your victim to reach his destination and pack the tank with as many ping pong balls as will fit.Then pour gasoline back into the tank to suspend all the balls.The gauge float should now float through them to the top.

I'd have to do a few tests, but it occurs to me that ping pong balls might be ideal depending on if they disolve in aviation fuel. As long as they were installed soon enough before the flight even that might not matter...if they melted in flight all the better-the evidence would dissappear even before the crash. But as long as the plane burned it wouldn't matter. The small amount of plastic in the balls would be consumed and traces of burnt plastic would be common in a light plane crash...

Anyhow it would make a good plot for a mystery. If the balls melt in flight all the pilot can detect is rapidly falling fuel gauges. If they don't his first hint may be a sputtering engine. Either way he is probably screwed.