What could a fighter jet do if a plane goes rogue in a terrorism situation. Surely they can’t push the plane in a certain direction to prevent them causing harm the plane is too big and that’s a recipe for disaster all round. Shooting the plane down has its own complications especially if flying over populated area.
What could they actually do in a code red situation?
In: 2414
I’m going to add a bit of positivity with a little known protocol that exist in many air forces.
While the end game is to absolutely shoot down a threat, there are steps in between and in the case of commercial airliners, the first approach is to attempt a forced landing. This can be achieved using 27mm guns used as warning shorts, or even a precise hit to aviation controls that will prevent climbing, course changes or sustained airspeed.
It can tell people on the ground how fast the plane is going, what direction it’s going, whether it changes altitude or course. It can look at the windows to see what might be happening in the cockpit, or maybe some passengers are sending messages in the windows.
It can shoot down the plane over a safer area than the middle of a huge city, if worse comes to worse.
The main goal is to get eyes on the situation. If necessary, they’ll shoot down the plane. It’s better to kill the few hundred on the plane than potentially thousands on the ground.
Fighter jets have lots of neat tools besides guns/missiles:
-Huge engines – helpful for arriving on the scene very quickly. It’s hard to overstate how much faster fighter jets are than civilian aircraft
-Powerful radar – works nicely with the big engines. Even if ATC does has a clear idea if where the target of interest is, you can speed everything up if you can see directly where it is yourself instead of having ATC vector you on to the airplane
-Nice big panoramic windscreens – Very useful for getting a good look at things, seeing if the pilot is slumped over, etc
-Thoroughly trained pilots – Military pilots are trained in things like formation flying, aerobatic maneuvers, which makes flying in close quarters with another aircraft much safer
To put it differently, just because they sent out fighter jets doesn’t necessarily mean they are jumping to the worst case scenario. It’s usually something simpler like a pilot not paying attention to Temporary Flight Restrictions, not tuned into the right frequency (or radio has busted), pilot straight up getting lost, a medical issue, and so on. Simply getting someone next to the plane to “wake up” the pilot and get their attention is extremely useful! Fighter jets are pretty good at that.
The mission set you’re referring to is [OP NOBLE EAGLE](https://shorturl.at/CELP5).
Everybody is talking about shoot down authority, but there’s a lot more a pilot can do before it gets to that situation, like visually confirming what’s going on through aircraft windows, etc. Interceptors have been used in the past when aircraft have become unresponsive and were able to report back visual indications of cabin depressurization, etc.
The stolen Q400 at SEATAC in 2018 is a good example of a scramble in support of this mission. [Many people reported sonic booms](https://theaviationist.com/2018/08/11/f-15cs-intercept-stolen-dash-8-airliner-out-of-seattle-tacoma-airport-before-crash/) caused by the ANG F-15C’s breaking the sound barrier en route to the incident. That’s virtually unheard of anywhere but specifically authorized air space, and would have required very high-level authorization due to the risk of A LOT of property damage. Also look at the pictures of the jets in that article – Those F-15s are carrying live missiles. Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, most jets don’t just sit around fully armed and ready for a shooting war at the drop of a hat. Flying armed with live missiles in peacetime is a really, really big deal.
Latest Answers