Can anyone explain what TFR's are supposed to do?

I haven't figured out why TFR's exist. How are they supposed to
protect the President and/or whatever else?

Does the Secret Service and the FAA really think that just having a
"no flight activity" within an imaginary circle sixty miles across
will really stop a determined assailant?

Besides, light airplanes just don't have the hitting power to cause
much of a problem for anything but a "soft" target, and any soft
target would be so small as to be an immensely hard target to hit, not
to mention how difficult it would be to be at the right place and time
to actually have a shot at hitting it while it's in the open.

I mean come'on, once the president's airplane is on the ground, he's
off and rolling on a schedule that has him moving constantly. Talk
about a moving target! And then when he stops, it's often inside a
big building.

Those times he might be scheduled for an outdoor address, I can see
the Secret Service getting a bit uptight about that and not wanting
stray airplanes around at that point, but how often does that happen?

Are the airliners prevented from flying within the TFR? If not, can
someone explain why not? It wasn't a lightplane that caused the
collaps of the WTC.

Is the TFR anything but a panacea for the Secret Service? Something
they can point to as proof that they take their job seriously?

Sort of reminds me of that old joke about a guy walking down the
street who spots another guy jumping up and down and waving a bag
above his head. The first guy stops and asks whats going on. The
second guy says he's scaring elephants away.

"There aren't any elephants around here." The first guy says.

"Pretty effective isn't it?" The second guy responds.

Corky Scott

Giving the gub'mit every benefit of the doubt, although without any evidence
that anyone currently in the administration could find their ass with both
hands, I think the idea is to reduce the number of radar targets they would
need to deal with if someone did attempt an aerial attack. Our GA planes
themselves are not the threat, they would just provide cover for one.

Being realistic, it's just more mindless knee jerking to make the uniformed
public feel better.

--
Roger Long

The TFRs are supposed to prevent an unspecified attack on the President of
the United States by unspecified persons.

While it is true that the TFRs are probably ineffective and they are
discriminatory, it is not true that general aviation airplanes pose no
threat or that their threat is less than that of ground vehicles.

A small airplane can approach a target at speeds in excess of 200 mph and
drop a bomb or detonate itself with little warning. The fact that the same
mission could be accomplished by other means, such as a truck full of
explosives, is irrelevant. It is possible that the means of attack is more
important to the attacker than the effectiveness of the attack -- the whole
"terror from the skies" thing.

Small airplanes flown by the Civil Air Patrol carried bombs and were
effective during WW II in patrolling against submarines and even managed to
sink one.

As Lee Harvey Oswald demonstrated, there is no way to protect the President
or anyone else against a determined and possibly suicidal attacker. There
will always be people who are willing to take great risks to get close to
the President, although no one has made a serious attempt since Gerald Ford.

"C J Campbell" wrote in message ...

As Lee Harvey Oswald demonstrated, there is no way to protect the President
or anyone else against a determined and possibly suicidal attacker. There
will always be people who are willing to take great risks to get close to
the President, although no one has made a serious attempt since Gerald Ford.

Excuse me? Hinkley managed to get a bullet into Ronald Reagan and turned
James Brady into a candidate for national vegetable.

"Ron Natalie" wrote in message
. ..
|
| "C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
|
| As Lee Harvey Oswald demonstrated, there is no way to protect the
President
| or anyone else against a determined and possibly suicidal attacker.
There
| will always be people who are willing to take great risks to get close
to
| the President, although no one has made a serious attempt since Gerald
Ford.
|
| Excuse me? Hinkley managed to get a bullet into Ronald Reagan and
turned
| James Brady into a candidate for national vegetable.
|

Can you believe it? (Well, I suppose Mr. Drescher can. -- He probably
figures I have trouble dressing myself in the morning.) I forgot about
President Reagan.

As Lee Harvey Oswald demonstrated, there is no way to protect the
President
or anyone else against a determined and possibly suicidal attacker. There
will always be people who are willing to take great risks to get close to
the President, although no one has made a serious attempt since Gerald
Ford.

Which president did Gerald Ford attempt to kill (besides himself, of
course)?

John Harlow ) wrote:

As Lee Harvey Oswald demonstrated, there is no way to protect the
President
or anyone else against a determined and possibly suicidal attacker. There
will always be people who are willing to take great risks to get close to
the President, although no one has made a serious attempt since Gerald
Ford.

Which president did Gerald Ford attempt to kill (besides himself, of
course)?

LOL! Very astute of you...


--
Peter












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"Corky Scott" wrote in message ...
I haven't figured out why TFR's exist. How are they supposed to
protect the President and/or whatever else?

That's the general principle.

Does the Secret Service and the FAA really think that just having a
"no flight activity" within an imaginary circle sixty miles across
will really stop a determined assailant?

The FAA ain't running the circus. I suspect that the Secret Service
feels that by keeping all (or at least) most friendly traffic out of the
area, it makes it easier to spot the unfriendlies.

The TFR's used to follow the president around for certain appearances
but they were MUCH smaller than the recent oens.

Are the airliners prevented from flying within the TFR? If not, can
someone explain why not? It wasn't a lightplane that caused the
collaps of the WTC.

The argument (laughable) is that air carriers have gone through a more
rigorous security procedure and aren't a problem.

In article ,
Ron Natalie wrote:
The FAA ain't running the circus. I suspect that the Secret Service
feels that by keeping all (or at least) most friendly traffic out of the
area, it makes it easier to spot the unfriendlies.

And notice when they're serious about it the TFR is 60 miles across.
Really makes you wonder what the point of a 6 mile wide TFR is. I can
cross from the edge of that to the center in 1 minute. Then what?
It's stupid, but I'd hate to generate so much discussion about it that
they "solve" the problem by widening the TFRs.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:45:14 -0400, "Ron Natalie"
wrote:

Are the airliners prevented from flying within the TFR? If not, can
someone explain why not? It wasn't a lightplane that caused the
collaps of the WTC.

The argument (laughable) is that air carriers have gone through a more
rigorous security procedure and aren't a problem.

So the government security forces feel that it's lightplanes that are
the problem? Let's review the terror strikes of the lightplanes over
the last few years: One sadly depressed kid flies a Cessna 152 (I
think it was a 152, perhaps it was a 172) into a building in Florida.
Results? One crumpled airplane and the building was slightly damaged.
No fire but the kid got very dead. In Italy a pilot seemingly
incapacitated, manages to crash into a highrise in his lightplane. I
think this time there may have been a fire, but again only the pilot
died. Perhaps this doesn't qualify as the pilot was supposedly ill
and unable to properly guide the airplane. The problem is, it
wandered about a good bit before it took a bead on the highrise.
Maybe a deliberate attack, maybe not.

Now let's review the record of airliners hijacked and used as guided
bombs. Hmmm, three times this resulted in horrific casualties and a
fouth time the entire airliner and all it's passengers were lost in a
crash in a field. Body count? About 3,000 people.

So does the presidential TFR protect against such further attacks with
airliners? It does not, they continue to fly. Instead it protects
against lightplanes.

It doesn't seem to matter to them that ***IF***, the big IF, a
terrorist managed to procure a small airplane and pack it with
explosives, they would not be turned away by a TFR. TFR's only catch
the innocent, albeit uninformed, citizen.

Corky Scott