1. Is tremendously fragile. It's an inflated sausage with a fragile skin, with half its takeoff weight as highly flamable, very high-energy fuel, soaring at altitudes and speeds which will almost certainly tear it to pieces, more particularly if control systems are affected, from even a modest blast. You'd need tens to thousands of times as much explosive to do remotely similar damage on ground.
2. Survivors of any initial blast are unlikely to survive subsequent developments.
3. Of their nature, airline passengers tend towards the wealthy and influential: businesspeople, legislators, and others with significant responsibility and importance within social structures.
4. The vehicle itself can be used as a weapon in ways few other vehicles can. A bomb used to direct an aircraft to a specific destination becomes a tremendous lever (as in 9/11).
The bomb which brought down Pan Am 103 (the Lockerbie incident) weighed a few ounces. The bomb Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols constructed for the Oklahoma City attack weighed 7,000 lb and filled a truck.
The Boston Marathon bombing involved two devices, several kilograms each. Three people were killed. Yes, 264 others were injured, some quite seriously. But the same explosives divided, say, amongst a number of aircraft could have killed many hundreds, possibly 1,000 or more.
Yes, highly strategic explosives placement might be able to disrupt other sites or forms of infrastructure. But the physical, medical, economic, social, and symbolic impacts of few other attacks are as high as those on aircraft.
1. Is tremendously fragile. It's an inflated sausage with a fragile skin, with half its takeoff weight as highly flamable, very high-energy fuel, soaring at altitudes and speeds which will almost certainly tear it to pieces, more particularly if control systems are affected, from even a modest blast. You'd need tens to thousands of times as much explosive to do remotely similar damage on ground.
2. Survivors of any initial blast are unlikely to survive subsequent developments.
3. Of their nature, airline passengers tend towards the wealthy and influential: businesspeople, legislators, and others with significant responsibility and importance within social structures.
4. The vehicle itself can be used as a weapon in ways few other vehicles can. A bomb used to direct an aircraft to a specific destination becomes a tremendous lever (as in 9/11).
The bomb which brought down Pan Am 103 (the Lockerbie incident) weighed a few ounces. The bomb Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols constructed for the Oklahoma City attack weighed 7,000 lb and filled a truck.
The Boston Marathon bombing involved two devices, several kilograms each. Three people were killed. Yes, 264 others were injured, some quite seriously. But the same explosives divided, say, amongst a number of aircraft could have killed many hundreds, possibly 1,000 or more.
Yes, highly strategic explosives placement might be able to disrupt other sites or forms of infrastructure. But the physical, medical, economic, social, and symbolic impacts of few other attacks are as high as those on aircraft.