September 17, 2001

7:57 PM

During a severe Air Defence Emergency in the US a regulatory scheme known as 'SCATANA' is automatically invoked to deal with the situation and minimise threats. The central provision of the plan is to 'disable navigation aids which the attackers might be relying on'. This didn't happen last Tuesday (FAA confirmed, NORAD refused comment). Could it have prevented the planes reaching their targets? Are there now serious grounds for concern regarding the implementation procedure of military provisions essential for preserving American airspace security? The Register appears to think so.
posted by Kino (7 comments total)

You can turn off all the navaids you want, but you can't prevent someone from following a large river to a large city and aiming for the tallest buildings you can see on a cloudless day with good visiblity.
posted by scottst at 8:59 PM on September 17, 2001

Actually, the Register thinks that there are problems with the procedures themselves -- as a result the implementation of some parts is probably not a good idea.
posted by krisjohn at 9:02 PM on September 17, 2001

Yeah, well observed Krisjohn. After posting i was hoping that is what would be conveyed and was aware it may not have been with the final line there; That it's not just the implementation of the procedure, but the actual so called 'cold-war fossil' of a strategy itself which makes implimentation of its defining aspect such a gamble in all but the most desperate of situations. Perhaps not just the procedure, but the technology it regulates is in need of modification to make the revised versions full implimentation more of a viable prospect in a limited attack scenario.

Scottst, it seems that navigation by way of visible geographic features is always possible - short of shooting down the plane it's unavoidable. The other variables that are within defence operatives power to effect by their actions however should be dealt with effectively so functionability of technological aids to attackers navigation is removed in an effort to minimise the threat.
posted by Kino at 9:23 PM on September 17, 2001

If the information provided by the navigation systems is of strategic value during events such as we saw last Tuesday then perhaps a system of encryption and digital certificates could be used to make sure that information is only available to those allowed access to it at any given moment -- and selected planes could have their authoration pulled (certificate invalidated) at a moment's notice.

But wait, isn't encryption one of Bin Laden's tools?
posted by krisjohn at 10:04 PM on September 17, 2001

One of his tools precisely because it is so hard to decipher. As you well know - The ability to utilise encryption techniques is a million miles removed from the ability to undermine the security of others who employ it. It can take one supercomputer at the forefront of the field months of constant number crunching to crack just one instance of deep random algorithm scrambled data and if the keys were dynamically issued in an encrypted format without human intervention there's no way the kind of terrorist organisation that exist today could overcome them in the window of time that even the longest of flight presents. So i agree - exploring solutions along those lines could be a step in the right direction for flight navigation technology. It can't be that hard to shut off aspects of a single crafts cockpit functions without sending the skies into chaos. They just need to find a way of doing it that a terrorist couldn't use against us, and ways for pilots to land safely if they did. Like anything - Easier said than done.
posted by Kino at 10:50 PM on September 17, 2001

Although Tacan, VOR, VORTAC, and other ground NAVAIDS are used by all today most, if not all, aircraft today have GPS or at least Loran install and one only need to know the Lat/Long of where they want to go. Once keyed in fly to info is displayed and it matters not what is on or off in the way of ground based NAVAIDS.
posted by MaGoo at 12:47 AM on September 18, 2001

Perhaps a solution for that could be to install the ability to block signals within the GPS range by onboard jamming devices that would leave the system unaffected outside the radius of the plane. Or something. Or anything :/
posted by Kino at 1:27 AM on September 18, 2001