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The comments so far seem pretty negative, but for a pause of (what the article says) of 15 minutes I'd say that sounds like a pretty good call on the FAA's part

The comments so far seem pretty negative, but for a pause of (what the article says) of 15 minutes I'd say that sounds like a pretty good call on the FAA's part for what reads like a moment of uncertainty with the risk of being wrong very great? Personally I'd think 15 minutes of inconvenience would be pretty petty of me to prioritize over protection from a potential national security threat

FPGAhacker 5y ago
I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK. I’m not saying there are no risks, but I can’t think of any.
- d23 5y ago
  Do you have sufficient expertise in this area that would make you qualified to assess such a thing?
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  We don't want our anti-missile systems to mistake our aircraft for an enemy missile. I'm not an expert in any of those things, but that's the best I can come up with.
  - bubbleRefuge 5y ago
    Me too. Was thinking same thing. Don't want planes getting caught in the crossfire considering we would probably throw a drag net of intercepting missiles at it.
  - drzaiusapelord 5y ago
    This is it. Look at how often this happens, recently in Iran and before that in Ukraine. Anti-missile and anti-air systems are extremely dangerous and reckless machines. Civilian flights get blown up all the time and being extra cautious makes a lot of sense.
    - jrockway 5y ago
      I don't think civilian flights get blown up all the time, but it does happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
      - dboreham 5y ago
        Consistent with "all the time" for me. e.g. much more often than massive Tsunamis or electrical grid-affecting Coronal Mass Ejection events.
        jrockway 5y ago
        That's fair. It should happen 0 times, but has happened infinitely more than that.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK. It's not exclusively about the risk of a jet being hit in the air. But you don't want to route a bunch of jets to land in a city that no longer exists.
- lamplovin 5y ago
  I'm not an expert or even novice on military weapons or defenses, so this response might just be Hollywood talking, but couldn't taking the planes out of the sky allow for a clearer shot of any deflection missiles/anti-air missiles or something like that?
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    That sounds pretty plausible. Also, how far does the EMP wave from a nuke travel? Would it minimize the potential damage to flying aircraft if they were on the ground compared to in the air? Or would it be a moot point and if in range of the emp, the blast itself would do more damage?
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      > In July 1962, the US carried out the Starfish Prime test, exploding a 1.44 Mt (6.0 PJ) bomb 400 kilometres (250 mi; 1,300,000 ft) above the mid-Pacific Ocean. This demonstrated that the effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion were much larger than had been previously calculated. Starfish Prime made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a microwave link. I guess that's the smallest of your worries if you are hit by a nuke.
      - bostonsre 5y ago
        > I guess that's the smallest of your worries if you are hit by a nuke. Well.. from what you posted I guess it depends on if you are in the plane or not. It sounds like you could be at a distance where you survive the blast but are impacted by the EMP and it would probably suck to be at 30k feet in a plane that is hit by an EMP.
        lobocinza 5y ago
        I don't think an EMP from a ground explosion would be significant. At least for a something 30k feet above it as I believe the pulse to be shaped horizontally and weak. To generate a significant EMP you have to detonate a nuke at high altitude as to cause a secondary EMP due to Earth magnetic field. Even if a plane is hit by an EMP I believe the engines will keep working and the plane will have backup controls. Unless it's a Boeing of the newer generation where everything is electrical/digital. And even if everything stops working it will keep gliding unless at an odd angle/speed at the moment of the hit. That said loss of instruments and radio would be painful. Components getting damaged depends on the magnitude of the EMP and a weak pulse might cause only transitory malfunctions. Note: my knowledge on this subject is superficial and I'm probably wrong.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Maybe they've developed an intercontinental anti-aircraft missile? b^)
- ramesh31 5y ago
  It's not about the risk of your aircraft. It's the risk to your aircraft. In an actual emergency involving airspace violation, anything in the sky becomes a potential threat for interception.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Exactly. If you're potentially activating missile defenses, you probably want all civilian air traffic out of the sky. For their own sake. Give the timing, uncertainty, countermeasures, and consequences of not intercepting... "Your flight leaves 30 minutes later" is a small price to pay vs "Passenger airliner shot down." Airliners carry less than 1,000 people. Usually a lot less. Nukemap says 10kt on downtown LA would result in about 71,000 immediate casualties. Would you want to be in the air when someone at NORAD has to make a call on something that may or may not be a passenger airliner?
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  EMP, perhaps?
- betterunix2 5y ago
  NK does not announce where their missiles are going, and NORAD probably wanted to clear some airspace to better track the missile, especially given that NK has missiles that can reach the west coast. The military also probably wanted to avoid dangerously confusing situations, like a civilian aircraft failing to squawk as expected or even a civilian plane crashing (just imagine what might happen -- NK is launching a missile, and suddenly NORAD is also tracking another object that seems to be an airplane without a transponder heading directly toward the Bay Area or receiving a call that some kind of explosion was just reported in LA following the object rapidly losing altitude...). It is not as if confusion during a tense moment leading to needless death is unprecedented in the history of aviation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    The radar signature, altitude and speed would be completely different than any civilian aircraft. That was a mach 10 missile. For reference SR-71, the fastest plane that entered service (at least of those we know) has a speed of 3.2+ mach.
    - betterunix2 5y ago
      ...because there is no way that a country would try to use a missile launch as a distraction while conducting an actual attack with an airplane...
      - lobocinza 5y ago
        In war and love everything is possible.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > NORAD probably wanted to clear some airspace to better track the missile I can't see any way planes in Western US airspace could possibly interfere with tracking an NK launched ICBM, even by clutter, except maybe in the last minutes of the terminal phase of warhead descent at which point any defense (active or civil or both) would already have to have been committed to do any good. Grounding planes is to mitigate risk to the people on the planes, and maybe to clear lines of fire for anti-missile systems (which is mostly about protecting people who aren't on the planes, but incidentally also protects those on the planes, too.)
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK. NK nuclear armed and, has the estimated ability to hit the West Coast of the US with ICBMs, and is believed to be able to make warheads small enough to mount on its ICBMs now. (The first two have been true for quite a few years now, the last is more recent.) The threat to people in planes is at least twofold: One: EMP from a nuclear blast is not a good thing for aircraft. Two: People on the ground can shelter to mitigate some of the risk from a confirmed incoming attack, people in planes cannot.
- ragle 5y ago
  I can only speculate - but I'm really curious. Looks like they may have launched a hypersonic missle that reached speeds of ~Mach 10[1], and the US (publicly, at least) seems to be lagging behind China and Russia in Hypersonic R&D - at least as of 2019[2]. How long would it take for a missile traveling at Mach 10 to reach a point where a high-altitude EMP attack[3] would cripple the west coast of the US? Is that time longer than it would take for aircraft to return to a place where they could land? If NORAD spots a bogey moving that fast, is the rule right now just... everything stops until we understand what's happening? Would love for someone who knows about hypersonics, NK missle capabilities, EMP attacks, etc. generally to say more. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-launches-possible-ballistic-missile-japan-says-2022-01-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-launches-p... [2] - https://www.defensenews.com/naval/the-drift/2019/11/15/dont-get-too-hyper-about-hypersonics-the-drift-season-ii-vol-i/ https://www.defensenews.com/naval/the-drift/2019/11/15/dont-... [3] - https://spectrum.ieee.org/one-atmospheric-nuclear-explosion-could-take-out-the-power-grid https://spectrum.ieee.org/one-atmospheric-nuclear-explosion-...
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    I'm not an expert, just a rocket enthusiast, but "hypersonic" really just means "near orbital velocities". There's a lot of noise about admittedly really impressive low-altitude air-breathing scramjets, but - as your articles point out - those are still a long way away. The war hawks like to complain that we're not spending sufficiently many billions on developing futuristic hypersonic scramjet missiles. They point to our lack of a working scramjet as evidence that we're doing poorly. And look! North Korea's launched a hypersonic missile, China's launched hypersonic test missiles, Russia's launching hypersonic missiles; we're behind in the next war and it hasn't even started yet! But those are just orbital or sub-orbital rockets at 50-100km altitude. Of course they're hypersonic, but that's not really that difficult - just build a big rocket, go up for a while, then turn sideways. We've been doing it since the 50s, tech is good enough now that relatively small companies like Firefly Space are launching small satellites to LEO with Series A fundraising of just $75 million. Tada! Hypersonic! The main point is that everyone has the capability to launch lots of these simple rockets, which can be devastatingly effective. Not as effective as highly steerable reentry vehicles or hypersonic scramjets, but enough that no one wants to be a target.
jjcm 5y ago
FWIW, it isn't 15 minutes of inconvenience. It's far, far more due to the traffic propagation. A 15 minute pause can result in hours of delays due to a traffic wave[0], which affects airliner takeoff scheduling as well. FAA definitely knew this and took it into account, which makes me even more curious as to the validity of the threat and what made them issue a ground order. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  Flight schedules always have slack built into them, I'm betting 15-20 minutes is probably the upper limit of what would not cause a large waterfall of issues.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    This is absolutely true. I can't count the number of times I've been on a flight where the captain said something like, "Well, we left a little late, but we'll make it up on the way there, and expect to arrive on time." I've had international flights leave an hour late and still arrive on time.
    - SEJeff 5y ago
      By default, flights are optimized for cost. Pilots can fly faster and burn more fuel to arrive at a destination (depending on reserve and bingo fuel of course) sooner. The goal is to use the minimum amount of fuel to get somewhere however and incur the most profit per passenger as a result. When you look at it, life really is an engineering problem.
      - reaperducer 5y ago
        By default, flights are optimized for cost. Decades ago, before all of the routes and scheduling got to be more of a mesh than an ideal hub-and-spoke, this was an absolute. But now, being late can cost far more money than what would be spent in fuel. Now, very often the airlines would rather burn some fuel and keep a plane on time than delay or cancel a dozen connecting flights at the destination.
ortusdux 5y ago
If anything, it served as a great test of that system. But from the sounds of it, NORAD declared this a non-issue and yet a portion of the FAA still proceeded with the shut-down. So whether this was a pass or a fail depends on who has the final authority over shutting down airspace.
- Traster 5y ago
  It's asymmetrical though right, accidentally not shutting down when it's unclear has a small likelihood of a massive loss of life. Accidentally not shutting down results in some eocnomic loss and lots of delays, but in a real way you know there's seriously limited downside. I don't know how the US is doing right now, but in other countries airlines are running way under capacity at the moment anyway, so they can recover from down time much better than usual.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
InitialLastName 5y ago
Doesn't that depend very much on the variables encoded in "inconvenience", "protection" and "potential"? I mean, I can spend 15 minutes putting on a full ABC suit every time I go outside, and would certainly protect me from some possible national security threats, but the extent of the inconvenience, the limited range of protection, and the very low potential would make that an unnecessarily foolish habit. In more of a real-life scenario, millions of people have spent the last 20 years wasting way more than 15 minutes standing in line to take off their shoes and get x-rayed every time they fly in an airplane to protect against a "potential national security threat" when the only thing that actually needed to happen was locking the cabin doors while the plane is in flight.
- jrockway 5y ago
  A hostile nation with nuclear weapons launched a missile. If you're going to take precautions, that's approximately when the cost/value proposition starts making sense.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Sure, I don't actually know the threat level here, and you could well be correct that this was an appropriate calibrated response. My only argument is that the US have strayed very far into "inconvenienced" territory (forgetting we had any compunctions about torturing people, spying on everyone in the developed world, attempting to entrap entire communities of people based on their religious affiliation) by using the "it's for national security" excuse. Americans would be well advised to be skeptical each and every time that excuse gets used.
  - landemva 5y ago
    The military made the call that South Korea was not in danger. Same for USA. Whoever in FAA started the call for ground stop should face discipline. The Karens waving their arms about safety seem addicted to their fear-based adrenaline rush.
- burrows 5y ago
  > In more of a real-life scenario, millions of people have spent the last 20 years wasting way more than 15 minutes standing in line to take off their shoes and get x-rayed every time they fly in an airplane to protect against a "potential national security threat" when the only thing that actually needed to happen was locking the cabin doors while the plane is in flight. Where the unstated goal is to prevent hijackers from turning airplanes into aimable missiles? Yeah, I like your argument, what are the counterpoints?
Lammy 5y ago
> Personally I'd think 15 minutes of inconvenience would be pretty petty of me to prioritize over protection from a potential national security threat Presumably even that would work out okay as long as we haven't simultaneously sent hundreds of fighter jets on a training mission in Alaska with only 14 remaining to defend CONUS http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviatio...
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Fighter jets won't do crap against an ICBM.
  - krono 5y ago
    The other way around, though... best to have them in the air.
    - eptcyka 5y ago
      Given the amount of infrastructure modern air forces require, it doesn't matter if the jet is alive and well in the air if all of the supporting cast is incinerated.
      - bserge 5y ago
      - krono 5y ago
        Good point. Although, if there's any chance of these difficult to replace assets surviving you'd probably want to take it. Any local airfield with a strip just barely long enough would do. Deterrence from opportunistic attacks by other parties is also something that comes to mind, but I'm not sure if that makes any sense in these scenarios.
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    No, but their onboard ordinance might be designed to take it out: https://futurism.com/military-f35-nuclear-missiles https://futurism.com/military-f35-nuclear-missiles
dijonman2 5y ago
> Personally I'd think 15 minutes of inconvenience would be pretty petty of me to prioritize over protection from a potential national security threat I can’t buy into this anymore, it’s the new think of the children. Used and abused. I’d rather live life like a normal human and if I perish, well, I had to die from something.
temptemptemp111 5y ago
lsllc 5y ago
Realistically, what are the odds that a NK launch could hit US aircraft traffic? In fact what are the odds that any nation except perhaps Russia could? Could the UK? France? China? I guess they have the technology, but I bet they couldn't deploy it from thousands of miles away. For example, the somewhat heroic story of the UK bombing Port Stanley from from the Ascension Islands on the equator during the onset of the Falklands War ... (yeah, ok that was 1982, but still). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck If NK had a sub off the coast of CA, then maybe, just maybe they could shoot down an airliner, although I'm still skeptical they could hit it with something that wasn't a sea launched Buk (i.e. built by Russia).

FPGAhacker 5y ago

I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK. I’m not saying there are no risks, but I can’t think of any.

d23 5y ago
Do you have sufficient expertise in this area that would make you qualified to assess such a thing?
theandrewbailey 5y ago
We don't want our anti-missile systems to mistake our aircraft for an enemy missile. I'm not an expert in any of those things, but that's the best I can come up with.
- bubbleRefuge 5y ago
  Me too. Was thinking same thing. Don't want planes getting caught in the crossfire considering we would probably throw a drag net of intercepting missiles at it.
- drzaiusapelord 5y ago
  This is it. Look at how often this happens, recently in Iran and before that in Ukraine. Anti-missile and anti-air systems are extremely dangerous and reckless machines. Civilian flights get blown up all the time and being extra cautious makes a lot of sense.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    I don't think civilian flights get blown up all the time, but it does happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
    - dboreham 5y ago
      Consistent with "all the time" for me. e.g. much more often than massive Tsunamis or electrical grid-affecting Coronal Mass Ejection events.
      - jrockway 5y ago
        That's fair. It should happen 0 times, but has happened infinitely more than that.
reaperducer 5y ago
I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK. It's not exclusively about the risk of a jet being hit in the air. But you don't want to route a bunch of jets to land in a city that no longer exists.
lamplovin 5y ago
I'm not an expert or even novice on military weapons or defenses, so this response might just be Hollywood talking, but couldn't taking the planes out of the sky allow for a clearer shot of any deflection missiles/anti-air missiles or something like that?
- bostonsre 5y ago
  That sounds pretty plausible. Also, how far does the EMP wave from a nuke travel? Would it minimize the potential damage to flying aircraft if they were on the ground compared to in the air? Or would it be a moot point and if in range of the emp, the blast itself would do more damage?
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    > In July 1962, the US carried out the Starfish Prime test, exploding a 1.44 Mt (6.0 PJ) bomb 400 kilometres (250 mi; 1,300,000 ft) above the mid-Pacific Ocean. This demonstrated that the effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion were much larger than had been previously calculated. Starfish Prime made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a microwave link. I guess that's the smallest of your worries if you are hit by a nuke.
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      > I guess that's the smallest of your worries if you are hit by a nuke. Well.. from what you posted I guess it depends on if you are in the plane or not. It sounds like you could be at a distance where you survive the blast but are impacted by the EMP and it would probably suck to be at 30k feet in a plane that is hit by an EMP.
      - lobocinza 5y ago
        I don't think an EMP from a ground explosion would be significant. At least for a something 30k feet above it as I believe the pulse to be shaped horizontally and weak. To generate a significant EMP you have to detonate a nuke at high altitude as to cause a secondary EMP due to Earth magnetic field. Even if a plane is hit by an EMP I believe the engines will keep working and the plane will have backup controls. Unless it's a Boeing of the newer generation where everything is electrical/digital. And even if everything stops working it will keep gliding unless at an odd angle/speed at the moment of the hit. That said loss of instruments and radio would be painful. Components getting damaged depends on the magnitude of the EMP and a weak pulse might cause only transitory malfunctions. Note: my knowledge on this subject is superficial and I'm probably wrong.
jessaustin 5y ago
Maybe they've developed an intercontinental anti-aircraft missile? b^)
ramesh31 5y ago
It's not about the risk of your aircraft. It's the risk to your aircraft. In an actual emergency involving airspace violation, anything in the sky becomes a potential threat for interception.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Exactly. If you're potentially activating missile defenses, you probably want all civilian air traffic out of the sky. For their own sake. Give the timing, uncertainty, countermeasures, and consequences of not intercepting... "Your flight leaves 30 minutes later" is a small price to pay vs "Passenger airliner shot down." Airliners carry less than 1,000 people. Usually a lot less. Nukemap says 10kt on downtown LA would result in about 71,000 immediate casualties. Would you want to be in the air when someone at NORAD has to make a call on something that may or may not be a passenger airliner?
Ancapistani 5y ago
EMP, perhaps?
betterunix2 5y ago
NK does not announce where their missiles are going, and NORAD probably wanted to clear some airspace to better track the missile, especially given that NK has missiles that can reach the west coast. The military also probably wanted to avoid dangerously confusing situations, like a civilian aircraft failing to squawk as expected or even a civilian plane crashing (just imagine what might happen -- NK is launching a missile, and suddenly NORAD is also tracking another object that seems to be an airplane without a transponder heading directly toward the Bay Area or receiving a call that some kind of explosion was just reported in LA following the object rapidly losing altitude...). It is not as if confusion during a tense moment leading to needless death is unprecedented in the history of aviation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
- lobocinza 5y ago
  The radar signature, altitude and speed would be completely different than any civilian aircraft. That was a mach 10 missile. For reference SR-71, the fastest plane that entered service (at least of those we know) has a speed of 3.2+ mach.
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    ...because there is no way that a country would try to use a missile launch as a distraction while conducting an actual attack with an airplane...
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      In war and love everything is possible.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > NORAD probably wanted to clear some airspace to better track the missile I can't see any way planes in Western US airspace could possibly interfere with tracking an NK launched ICBM, even by clutter, except maybe in the last minutes of the terminal phase of warhead descent at which point any defense (active or civil or both) would already have to have been committed to do any good. Grounding planes is to mitigate risk to the people on the planes, and maybe to clear lines of fire for anti-missile systems (which is mostly about protecting people who aren't on the planes, but incidentally also protects those on the planes, too.)
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK. NK nuclear armed and, has the estimated ability to hit the West Coast of the US with ICBMs, and is believed to be able to make warheads small enough to mount on its ICBMs now. (The first two have been true for quite a few years now, the last is more recent.) The threat to people in planes is at least twofold: One: EMP from a nuclear blast is not a good thing for aircraft. Two: People on the ground can shelter to mitigate some of the risk from a confirmed incoming attack, people in planes cannot.
ragle 5y ago
I can only speculate - but I'm really curious. Looks like they may have launched a hypersonic missle that reached speeds of ~Mach 10[1], and the US (publicly, at least) seems to be lagging behind China and Russia in Hypersonic R&D - at least as of 2019[2]. How long would it take for a missile traveling at Mach 10 to reach a point where a high-altitude EMP attack[3] would cripple the west coast of the US? Is that time longer than it would take for aircraft to return to a place where they could land? If NORAD spots a bogey moving that fast, is the rule right now just... everything stops until we understand what's happening? Would love for someone who knows about hypersonics, NK missle capabilities, EMP attacks, etc. generally to say more. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-launches-possible-ballistic-missile-japan-says-2022-01-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-launches-p... [2] - https://www.defensenews.com/naval/the-drift/2019/11/15/dont-get-too-hyper-about-hypersonics-the-drift-season-ii-vol-i/ https://www.defensenews.com/naval/the-drift/2019/11/15/dont-... [3] - https://spectrum.ieee.org/one-atmospheric-nuclear-explosion-could-take-out-the-power-grid https://spectrum.ieee.org/one-atmospheric-nuclear-explosion-...
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  I'm not an expert, just a rocket enthusiast, but "hypersonic" really just means "near orbital velocities". There's a lot of noise about admittedly really impressive low-altitude air-breathing scramjets, but - as your articles point out - those are still a long way away. The war hawks like to complain that we're not spending sufficiently many billions on developing futuristic hypersonic scramjet missiles. They point to our lack of a working scramjet as evidence that we're doing poorly. And look! North Korea's launched a hypersonic missile, China's launched hypersonic test missiles, Russia's launching hypersonic missiles; we're behind in the next war and it hasn't even started yet! But those are just orbital or sub-orbital rockets at 50-100km altitude. Of course they're hypersonic, but that's not really that difficult - just build a big rocket, go up for a while, then turn sideways. We've been doing it since the 50s, tech is good enough now that relatively small companies like Firefly Space are launching small satellites to LEO with Series A fundraising of just $75 million. Tada! Hypersonic! The main point is that everyone has the capability to launch lots of these simple rockets, which can be devastatingly effective. Not as effective as highly steerable reentry vehicles or hypersonic scramjets, but enough that no one wants to be a target.

jjcm 5y ago

FWIW, it isn't 15 minutes of inconvenience. It's far, far more due to the traffic propagation. A 15 minute pause can result in hours of delays due to a traffic wave[0], which affects airliner takeoff scheduling as well. FAA definitely knew this and took it into account, which makes me even more curious as to the validity of the threat and what made them issue a ground order. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave

skrtskrt 5y ago
Flight schedules always have slack built into them, I'm betting 15-20 minutes is probably the upper limit of what would not cause a large waterfall of issues.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  This is absolutely true. I can't count the number of times I've been on a flight where the captain said something like, "Well, we left a little late, but we'll make it up on the way there, and expect to arrive on time." I've had international flights leave an hour late and still arrive on time.
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    By default, flights are optimized for cost. Pilots can fly faster and burn more fuel to arrive at a destination (depending on reserve and bingo fuel of course) sooner. The goal is to use the minimum amount of fuel to get somewhere however and incur the most profit per passenger as a result. When you look at it, life really is an engineering problem.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      By default, flights are optimized for cost. Decades ago, before all of the routes and scheduling got to be more of a mesh than an ideal hub-and-spoke, this was an absolute. But now, being late can cost far more money than what would be spent in fuel. Now, very often the airlines would rather burn some fuel and keep a plane on time than delay or cancel a dozen connecting flights at the destination.

ortusdux 5y ago

If anything, it served as a great test of that system. But from the sounds of it, NORAD declared this a non-issue and yet a portion of the FAA still proceeded with the shut-down. So whether this was a pass or a fail depends on who has the final authority over shutting down airspace.

Traster 5y ago
It's asymmetrical though right, accidentally not shutting down when it's unclear has a small likelihood of a massive loss of life. Accidentally not shutting down results in some eocnomic loss and lots of delays, but in a real way you know there's seriously limited downside. I don't know how the US is doing right now, but in other countries airlines are running way under capacity at the moment anyway, so they can recover from down time much better than usual.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

InitialLastName 5y ago

Doesn't that depend very much on the variables encoded in "inconvenience", "protection" and "potential"? I mean, I can spend 15 minutes putting on a full ABC suit every time I go outside, and would certainly protect me from some possible national security threats, but the extent of the inconvenience, the limited range of protection, and the very low potential would make that an unnecessarily foolish habit. In more of a real-life scenario, millions of people have spent the last 20 years wasting way more than 15 minutes standing in line to take off their shoes and get x-rayed every time they fly in an airplane to protect against a "potential national security threat" when the only thing that actually needed to happen was locking the cabin doors while the plane is in flight.

jrockway 5y ago
A hostile nation with nuclear weapons launched a missile. If you're going to take precautions, that's approximately when the cost/value proposition starts making sense.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Sure, I don't actually know the threat level here, and you could well be correct that this was an appropriate calibrated response. My only argument is that the US have strayed very far into "inconvenienced" territory (forgetting we had any compunctions about torturing people, spying on everyone in the developed world, attempting to entrap entire communities of people based on their religious affiliation) by using the "it's for national security" excuse. Americans would be well advised to be skeptical each and every time that excuse gets used.
- landemva 5y ago
  The military made the call that South Korea was not in danger. Same for USA. Whoever in FAA started the call for ground stop should face discipline. The Karens waving their arms about safety seem addicted to their fear-based adrenaline rush.
burrows 5y ago
> In more of a real-life scenario, millions of people have spent the last 20 years wasting way more than 15 minutes standing in line to take off their shoes and get x-rayed every time they fly in an airplane to protect against a "potential national security threat" when the only thing that actually needed to happen was locking the cabin doors while the plane is in flight. Where the unstated goal is to prevent hijackers from turning airplanes into aimable missiles? Yeah, I like your argument, what are the counterpoints?

Lammy 5y ago

> Personally I'd think 15 minutes of inconvenience would be pretty petty of me to prioritize over protection from a potential national security threat Presumably even that would work out okay as long as we haven't simultaneously sent hundreds of fighter jets on a training mission in Alaska with only 14 remaining to defend CONUS http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviatio...

dragontamer 5y ago
Fighter jets won't do crap against an ICBM.
- krono 5y ago
  The other way around, though... best to have them in the air.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    Given the amount of infrastructure modern air forces require, it doesn't matter if the jet is alive and well in the air if all of the supporting cast is incinerated.
    - bserge 5y ago
    - krono 5y ago
      Good point. Although, if there's any chance of these difficult to replace assets surviving you'd probably want to take it. Any local airfield with a strip just barely long enough would do. Deterrence from opportunistic attacks by other parties is also something that comes to mind, but I'm not sure if that makes any sense in these scenarios.
- SEJeff 5y ago
  No, but their onboard ordinance might be designed to take it out: https://futurism.com/military-f35-nuclear-missiles https://futurism.com/military-f35-nuclear-missiles

dijonman2 5y ago

> Personally I'd think 15 minutes of inconvenience would be pretty petty of me to prioritize over protection from a potential national security threat I can’t buy into this anymore, it’s the new think of the children. Used and abused. I’d rather live life like a normal human and if I perish, well, I had to die from something.

temptemptemp111 5y ago

lsllc 5y ago

Realistically, what are the odds that a NK launch could hit US aircraft traffic? In fact what are the odds that any nation except perhaps Russia could? Could the UK? France? China? I guess they have the technology, but I bet they couldn't deploy it from thousands of miles away. For example, the somewhat heroic story of the UK bombing Port Stanley from from the Ascension Islands on the equator during the onset of the Falklands War ... (yeah, ok that was 1982, but still). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck If NK had a sub off the coast of CA, then maybe, just maybe they could shoot down an airliner, although I'm still skeptical they could hit it with something that wasn't a sea launched Buk (i.e. built by Russia).