HOW TO ANALYZE SECURITY MEASURES MADE EASY

UNCLASSIFIED - Mar 19, 2003
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
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1. Generally speaking, for aircraft about 12,500 lbs and less, because their wheels will not sink into hard dirt surfaces, and nicked-props or grass stains are of no concern to a suicidal zealot, these smaller aircraft do not physically NEED any paved runway of any length, and can actually land/takeoff from anywhere. Because of this there is little to nothing you can do to address such a threat on the ground at the few public-use airports.

Trying to impose measures to secure the skies on the ground at GA airports is like trying to keep people from peeing by locking a few public restrooms. (Hey, my kids are 8 yrs old, I think this way). It serves no real purpose; it causes a lot of unnecessary pent up stress, and it's a total waste of energy and resources.

2. The paradigm that used to apply during the 'Cold War' was that long range radar would DETECT an inbound unidentified aircraft early enough to provide enough time to dispatch an intercepting fighter while the intruder was still far from its possible target. The fighter would scramble to intercept & track the unidentified intruder. If when intercepted the intruder aircraft was a Boeing 747 and said 'British Airways' on the side then it was irrelevant; a call was made to the avionics shop, end of exercise. If the intruder was a Migoyan or Tupelov and showed a Soviet red star on the side (or the radar reflective harmonics of its engine at 45 miles said so), then it was a 'hostile.' When the intercept was complete the Russian test of USA detection and response was done, as was the USAF response; and everyone would go home having depleted their nations' treasuries by some tens of thousands of dollars for the exercise.

3. Today, the inbound unidentified aircraft intruder is detected by various means, including (but certainly not limited to) radar and transponder code. If one were simply to intercept it (~$30,000 per intercept), invariably the intruder would be a Gulfstream, or Lear, or Cessna, and offer no other distinguishing marks other than a legitimate FAA registration number emblazoned on its side and a smiling pilot in its window..

THUS - The ONLY way to distinguish between two civil aircraft, one known and one unknown, is for some procedural means of Identify-Friend-from-Foe in which only the friend knows the secret code, handshake or tail wiggle; the other does not.

DEFINITION OF A 'SECURE FACILITY':
A facility is 'Secure' if AFTER an attempted breach has been DETECTED, your INTERDICTION can respond before the bad guys do their nasty.

Once you have identified it's a FRIEND coming through, you ignore it (or say 'hi!') and get on with your life.

If it's a FOE, then you either take action to ENGAGE, or you WAVE OFF, because if you're not going to do anything about it then you might as well save your energies for something useful, like lunch.

WHAT WE DO IN THE WASHINGTON TFR
Anything DETECTED entering the air, FROM ANYWHERE, INCLUDING ANY OPEN FIELDS, that has NOT been identified as a FRIEND, is PRESUMED FOE, and is INTERDICTED by one of several various and often dramatic means. That even includes ultra-lights and occasionally flocks of birds.

That too, is very simple.

The devil is in the details...

THE 'DETERRENCE' ARGUMENT
The nature of the 'deterrents,' which are anything placed prior to detection, are measures to encourage the bad guy to go elsewhere, but deterrents have to be matched to the type of threat(s) you are trying to deter.

If you want to keep short deer and kids on bicycles out of your airport, fences will do quite well; if that's your real problem.

If you want to scare off people who don't like to write, then require a lot of forms to be filled out. Also check quality of handwriting and penmanship.

To keep Soviet T-72 tanks off your airfield you will need something a bit more ah, er extensive.

A minefield around the perimeter of your airfield offers the most effective deterrent, and has better aesthetics, but is really difficult to keep neatly mowed.

To keep someone who is bent on stealing an airplane and killing themselves, and whatever or whoever else they can, a fence, or little ID badges, or paperwork, merely define clearly how best to enter your facility.

1A. WHY NO SILLY FENCES
To RESPOND with INTERDICTION you must first DETECT an intruder. Other than a CASUAL DETERRENT, measures like fences only have value as delaying devices to buy more time for INTERDICTION to respond, AFTER the intruder has been DETECTED. Thus any deterrent placed in front of the means of detection is all but pointless.

An unmonitored fence does nothing except to make it harder for (short) deer and kids on bicycles to breach these ramparts. An unmonitored fence does not DETECT an unauthorized intruder (unless someone hears the noise as the bad guy tears their pants going over your fence).

The terrorist can take all day or night artistically snipping out bits of fence. They can return the next day, bring lunch, some wine, some cheese, perhaps even some crackers, and finish cutting an artistic entrance at their convenience.

And even a bored teenager can easily climb any fence less than 14 feet with razor wire.

(For example, there was that time a friend and I in Junior high school wanted to use the local Catholic school's locked tennis courts. Some other kids saw us in there. The nuns finally came charging out when they realized that all their courts were taken, and the gates were still locked on the outside. The fences didn't stop us, the tennis matches stopped when the nuns detected us and initiated interdiction).

If you have means of detection and interdiction, the 'security measures' that are placed before the means of detection are simply an inconvenience to the bad guy; and such measures are totally irrelevant to controlling the unauthorized use of a GA aircraft, which can land or takeoff from anywhere.

1B. NO SILLY BADGES
The presumption of a badge is that it has only been given to 'vetted' people, that someone is then going to check it, and if unauthorized, someone is going to then going to stop them.

Unmanned aerial vehicles are unlikely to come into the pilot shop to present their badges.

Terrorists are similarly unlikely.

The greatest mistake is to assume that little badges are going to stop anyone or anything from climbing either the unmonitored fences or taking off from the nearby farmer's fields.

Little badges do not in ANY WAY control access to the skies.

And every terrorist so far would qualify for any badge with flying colors.

(Another scary bit is to realize that once you've digitized fingerprints into little biometric ID cards, you can then send/steal their information by email, like credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. Once such data is digitized it can be easily stolen, and is no longer a valid identifier).

Ahh, then there are those retinal scanners. But who is going to keep them clean?

SO WHERE DID THE CRAZINESS COME FROM?

LARGE COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT
Large commercial jets really do need paved runways, thus their points of landing a departure are clearly constrained to large airports.

FAA Parts 108 (airline personnel) and 107 (airport personnel) were developed in response to a series of airliner hijackings many years ago. Applying only to large airports, because that's where large aircraft physically HAVE to operate, these regulations attempt to control who has physical access to the large commercial aircraft.

FAA Part 108 tries to keep people with a violent arrest history from getting those high-paying jobs as airline crew, and FAA Part 107 tries to keep people away who might steal things from passenger luggage.

Did I mention that it's those pesky passengers that keep blowing things up and hijacking aircraft?. That's where all the phrenology (feeling the bumps on your head) and luggage screening comes from.

CRAZINESS IN THE WASHINGTON TFR

1. THE AIRSPACE IFF PROCEDURES ARE ACTUALLY QUITE EASY
For the vetted user, the airspace procedures are no different than filing any 'ol IFR flight plan. The trick is that only vetted pilots CAN generate such strange flight plans, which are in actuality dynamic changing military 'PPR' airspace clearances.

2. VETTING PILOTS THIS WAY IS SILLY
Here is where it gets really funny (AND SORT OF SAD): Neither the FAA nor the TSA really know what to do. In light of not knowing what to do, they do that which has nothing to do with what needs to be done. (Even I had to read that sentence a few times, but I left it in to give your brain a moment's brief respite).

The FAA - For lack of knowing anything smarter to do, the FAA administratively performs a 'ramp check' to see if the following things are bureaucratically consistent:

1) Your face matches your ID, (Duh...)

2) Your driver's license is current (Trust that DMV!)

3) Your airmen license matches the FAA's records (And the FAA is never wrong).

4) Your medical matches FAA records (Wouldn't want a terrorist to fly on an expired medical).

Even a terrorist within an IQ of '7' would get these straight. Requiring applicants to tie their shoelaces would be more effective.

The biggest failure is that the FAA isn't very good at updating its OWN information; your doctor may have mistyped your address; and more fundamentally these matters are entirely irrelevant to address this concern. (See the earlier section about matching deterrent with threat).

Since the FAA is neither an intelligence nor military organization (now save those wry comments..) it has no applicable criteria to use for this clearance (nor is it ever likely to create any).

Despite their best efforts, the FAA should simply stop trying to rationalize their part of the clearance as a meaningless administrative review of unimportant pieces of paper.

It is an interview to see if there is something wrong. Stop chasing paper.

The TSA - For lack of knowing what better to do, the TSA is using electronic fingerprinting and mis-applying Part 108 criteria (well, the even more inappropriate 107 criteria, but who is counting) to the clearance process for GA pilots.

There ARE some very legitimate aspects of the clearance process, but once people figure out what they SHOULD be doing we can make it more thorough, less painful, and far more efficient.

There ARE some legitimate aspects to gathering this type of intelligence in a clearance process, but they are being mostly overlooked (at least by some) by trying to apply unrelated 'standard procedures.'

The FAA and TSA need to stop acting reactively, and start using a rational clearance process actually appropriate for this situation.

3. 'GROUND SECURITY' IS INEFFECTIVE FOR GA AIRCRAFT
The USSS understands that it is all about airspace DETECTION and INTERDICTION. Even the USSS used the phrase "A common-sense community watch."

For lack of knowing anything else to do the FAA (and then TSA) grabbed their FAA Part 107 books and said, 'let's do it this way!'

In other words, don't look to the Feds as your party planner.

Relying on 'Ground Security' at GA airports is like trying to control the movements of bicycles throughout a city by posting armed guards at a few of the bicycle racks. It's just darn silly.

Since the airports cannot CONTROL access to airspace, but can ASSIST GREATLY with the PILOT clearance and training process, the TSA should get out of the hair of its strongest allies and stop applying silly unrelated standards that achieve absolutely nothing.

TRYING TO JUSTIFY THOSE 'LAYERED DEFENSES'
Oooo, I like this one. Whenever I hear someone justify their capital or organizational expenditures for 'security measures' that are positioned before any means of detection, it immediately tells me two things:

AIR THREATS? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!
As recently as a few days ago I heard that 'someone in security was concerned' about a light civil airplane from the MD3 somehow 'crashing into an airliner.'

I clarified for them that "A prop driven aircraft cannot crash into an airliner, but an airliner can crash into a prop driven aircraft."

Relative to the speed of any jet, any prop-driven aircraft is almost standing still.

Let's see...DCA Control: "United Airlines 123, suggest you climb at 4,000 feet per minute and 400+ knots until we figure out what that suspicious 100 knot light civil is doing flying five miles behind you."

SO, THE REAL PUNCH LINE
The only thing that provides ANY real security from any conceivable, potential GA terrorist acts, which can far more readily come from any one of the zillions of open fields surrounding the few relatively scarce public-use airports, is positive airspace IFF.

With the addition of a few tweaks, the existing ARTCC system already provides means to do just that.

Then it's simply a matter of defining a 'friendly' and then providing the 'friendly' pilots with the easiest method possible to identify themselves to the various means of detection and interdiction that may be available at any location.

The more cleared pilots you have in the sky,
The more 'Eyes In The Sky'
Are on your side.

More updates as I have time...
Enjoy!

David Wartofsky

QUESTION #1 How do you control the mis-use of light aircraft which do not require an airport, and can literally takeoff from any open unattended grass field?	ANSWER #1 You must be able to detect all airborne targets, and also have a means to distinguish friend from foe to determine your response.
QUESTION #2 What is the simplest means for pilots to identify themselves as FRIEND to airborne DETECTION	ANSWER #2 Constantly changing airborne IFF (transponder) codes that are only given to vetted pilots with each flight; ALMOST LIKE ANY 'OL IFR FLIGHT PLAN. (That's a hint for those of you in class paying attention).
QUESTION #3 How does one as easily as possible, procedurally control access to who gets those IFF transponder codes?	ANSWER #3 There is a way, that's what we do. It is a little broken, but it is a good start, and pretty user-friendly. It should be 'need-to-know,' but the FAA only knows how to issue public notice SFARs and NOTAMs; so they keep publicly publishing what should simply be need-to-know information within misguided, often confused 'rules & regs.'
QUESTION #4 What are rational criteria for who is given the means to identify themselves as FRIEND?	ANSWER# 4 The clearance process must not inadvertently clear physically capable, 17-40 year old, taliban trained, mostly middle-eastern, Islamic male zealots, who want to kill themselves and a bunch of other innocent people in the process. So what do you look for in the clearance process? *Gee, duh, I dunno...* Some current steps we use are quite logical, some are, well, perhaps most politely described as 'bizarre.' A person's willingness to fill out paperwork is NOT an effective deterrent or discriminator to a suicidal zealot. Suicidal zealots are MORE willing to fill out the forms than the good guys and gals. Therefore, anyone willing to fill out the paperwork is MORE suspect, and should be immediately clapped in irons!
*SUGGESTION: Probably the least intrusive and most effective way to conclusively screen out Islamic zealots would be to require each applicant to eat a ham sandwich!*