How would you spend $40 Billion against terrorism on Safety/Well-being in the 21st century?

[Mytv]

The plan on adding gunned airmen to airplanes as a way of safety is not a fix as then guns would be aboard planes. Most instances if the weapon ever went off then the plane would go down, as the guns are only there to intimidate people.

A consideration for some form of high-tech computer autopilot system eliminating pilots all together would be great. Or some form of emergency autopilot to eliminate situations such as this, that would be controlled from the radar center.

US does have the capiblities as they just flew unmanned planes over Iraq.

What are some other ways to spend the money?

 

[perry]

The $40 billion is for relief efforts in NYC and DC as well as the investigation and following military action. At least that's the way I understand it.

Personally, I wouldn't feel very safe on an airplane that is being flown without a human at the stick pointing it, at least for take-offs and landings. An emergency landing system would have been neat for situations like this, but, who would finance it? The government wouldn't want to be funding upgrades on commercial airlines (or, rather, the unflying public, or the folks that only fly once or twice a year). Not to mention that it would take years to successfully test and implement such a system.

I don't like the idea of guns on airplanes, even if the marshall is an expert shot. I hope that they are smart enough to make the marshall undercover so you don't know which guy has the gun. To me, that would just add a sense of terror.

Spend the money on manpower. Fire all the private companies that take care of security at airports, bring in Customs and/or Border Patrol agents that are properly trained, not minimum age fools that are there to make a buck. Put more CIA folks on the ground in foreign countries. We need intelligence, we need to know what's going on. Relying on satellites and picking up fools running around the US doesn't do any good, we need to know what's going on before it happens.

 

[vegetation]

Use things like high tech zoomable cameras in the airplanes, streamed to a regional location in real-time. Biometric equipment could be installed and required to be used before anyone could board. A central computer system could have a database full of potential terrorists (assuming US intelligence is doing their job). Tech like this already exists so it's not fantasy-land.

 

[jobuRAVE]

I would spend part of the funds to help the people heal and to repair the cities damaged in the attacks. Next, I would allocate part of the budget to creating several teams of hackers to disrupt and decode information gathered on terrorism. This would include destroying or stealing anything of value whether it be bank account funds or location data of future plans or movements. Then, I would spend part of the money on a similar operation ala Reciprocity as seen in the movie Clear and Present Danger to slow down and disrupt terrorism in parts of the alleged 34 countries with terrorist rings. Once the locations had been positively identified I would send in elite teams to use guerilla warfare, laying of booby traps and other damaging or lethal devices (i.e mines, poison gas, etc), and the razing of territory. I would use the remaining funds to continue training operations for more elite guerrials and hackers and in the research and development of more lethal and devasting close personal combat devices.