If you are a fighter pilot who was just ordered to fire upon

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: RaistlinZ
Here's a question for y'all...

Would you still shoot the plane down if you knew all of your close family members were on board? Wife, children, parents, etc.

Unless a Wesley Snipes or Jack Bauer type person is onboard, they're basically dead anyway. If the pilot doesn't kill them, the terrorists will.

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: Rapidskies

Originally posted by: giantpinkbunnyhead

Originally posted by: Rapidskies

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: Rapidskies
Would I be allowed to give warning shots? If I was allowed to shoots a few rounds off the planes nose just to let them know that I meant business and get some live fire exercises then I would feel ok in taking the final shot. This way they at least have a warning of some type before I would have to bring that puppies down.

If theyre on route to crash the plane into a building, I highly doubt a "warning shot" is going to deter them. If anything, it would only increase the horror for the passengers.

Then I would most likelies shoot the windows out of the cockpit and render the terrorists unconscious giving the passengers a chance to get at the controls of the the plane. This should disuade the passengers horrors.

If you do that, the whole cabin would depressurize... further, the passengers would become incapacitated first because the O2 available in the quick-donning crew masks in the cockpit is provided under forced pressure. The dinky yellow-cup-and-bag masks are rebreathers and useless above ~25,000-30,000 feet anyway. At that ambient pressure altitude, it doesn't matter if you have O2 or not... you don't have the pressure available to get it pushed through to the blood stream. If you shoot the windows out, and don't hit the terrorists, and they are smart enough to put the O2 masks on... they'll be breathing just fine.

Of course... this whole premise negates the probability that, lacking windows, the cockpit would sink to -40 F and be exposed to oncoming winds of 500 mph, which can't possibly be a detriment!

Also this assumes the plane is at altitude when fired upon by out hypothetical fighter pilot.

I have given this much of my thoughts throught the last days and have comein up with a solutions. Your points are well theorized but are open to my imaginations.

A. We must persuade the terrorists to lower their altitudes before I can shoot out their cockpits windows. How to do this to unincorigible terrorists? Shoot holes in the wings until the area of the wing has less force that it will create a slow descension of the planes. You would have to make sure to create an equal force on each wing.

B. Once the alititudes have been lowered then I could shoot the windows and terrorists out of the cockpits.

3. I could then talk the passengers through landing the planes safely.

You do realize we dont use 30 or 50 calibers anymore in fighters for gun systems right?

1 20mm High explosive incinderary round would not only blow the windows and most likely part of the airframe as well as render any non armoured equipment destroyed and burning...
and the fact the at 4000 rnds LOW setting the smallest burst you could squeeze out would be 50-80 rnds.. rendering the entire front of the A/C destroyed.

todays gun systems are very deadly and the ammo we use magnifys the affect of the punch.

standard load for an F/A-18A-F Hornet is 575 HEI rnds.. (high explosive incinderary)
with a high setting of 6000 rnds per minute and a low of 4000 good luck on minimizing damage on an Unarmored target.

 

[ebaycj]

fire on it with a long-range air-to-air tac-nuke FTW !!!

 

[0roo0roo]

well the gun on a fighter is mounted straight ahead. so how owuld u aim for the pilot anyways? it would require some wacky maneurvering. and yea u'd blow out all the controls, its not a sniper gun, its a machine gun lobbing mini grenades

 

[sygyzy]

I would do it if I trusted my government/(it's) intelligence.

 

[sao123]

Shooting down a plane of 200 faceless individuals and 5 terrorists is far easier than allowing the plane to kill a few thousand faceless individuals.