Mr. Lidle's Plane

It seems that shortly after Mr. Lidle’s small, single engine plane crashed into the side of a building in New York that fighter jets were put in the skies over several major American cities. This concept strikes me as absurd, as it did when it first appear in late 2001.

Firstly, why the other cities? Maybe there was some evidence to suggest this was some larger plot, but I have not heard it mentioned. If there was not evidence to suggest a plot why would this be your next action? Moreover, the plane seems to have made a mayday call shortly before crashing. To me this incident reeks of a one-off tragic accident. I pretty confidant that little evidence will come to light to suggest otherwise.

The larger problem with alerting the fighter jets is how we might expect these crime-fighting machines to actually be used.

A major problem in places like New York City is the limited distance from the airport to the city centre. The heart of New York is just moments away from La Guardia, JFK, and Newark. So if we stick with the jet fighter approach it means that the powers that be must determine that something is amiss and then conclude that it is serious enough for them to counter the threat with serious firepower. Of course, one would likely have less than five minutes to make this decision in situations that count. So one has to wonder if the fighter jet is not in the air can it be of any use at all?

The next major problem is what the fighter jet does while it is up in the sky fighting off risks for the frightened public. Does the pilot just strafe the plane with machine gun fire, not really worrying about the millions below? Or maybe the pilot fires a few missiles? I can’t see either of these being really good options.

The next problem occurs when we think about what happens if a plane is actually hit. Where does it go? Wall Street seems like a possibility in the fighter jet scenario. I don’t see have having falling planes as a particularly safe activity. And which government employee has the authority to authorize a fighter jet to shoot down a plane, which may have only briefly left its flight path. The larger the plane the more complex the problem. I don’t think that I am aware of a western politician or government that would stand behind the active killing of all aboard a commercial airline flight to Florida. If this action did occur it would likely take the government under which it occurred out of office.

So at the end of the day it seems that this is a plan that just won’t work, even under the best of circumstances. It seems to fall flat in terms of logistics as well as political feasibility. The main questions that are left are why such a program exists and how it has not come under intense criticism. I think that we may find it is safe to conclude that this program, surely costing millions of dollars, can only be for optics. It appears to be created as a non-starter, never able to do what it was created to do. The funny thing is that I am not sure that it works. Do I really feel safer to be in a large American city if there are loaded fighter jets flying overhead?