New Pilotless Passenger Jet Flown Remotely

Pilotless passenger jet flown remotely by RAF in world first! (Or at least officially a Worlds first)


This is a standard BAC 1-11 that has been modified. Notice the pod?

The system was developed by QinetiQ, formerly the Government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, with funding from the MOD’s Research Acquisition Organisation (part of science / innovation and technology). While only one aircraft was physically being flown, it had banks of duplicated equipment to mimic three further UAVs, all of which were successfully flown onto targets during the demonstration.

Hmmm.. a normal passenger Jet modified to allow it to be remote controlled from another aircraft.

I thought this maybe of interest to members here since there has been much debate on whether a pod was attached to the bottom of the planes that hit the towers and whether they were remote controlled.

Well, its certainly not impossible! Check out 9/11 in plane site too if you haven't yet which covers some of the pod/remote controlled type issues.

A passenger jet simulating a pilotless combat aircraft was flown from RAF Boscombe Down to an area of the Bristol Channel target area by its normal crew – who then "handed over" control to the pilot of a nearby RAF Tornado fighter via data links from his cockpit.

Once at operating height the crew of the passenger jet - a standard BAC 1-11 but with seats replaced by three autonomous sets of hi-tech Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle simulators - relaxed as the Tornado pilot took over the controls and instructed the commercial jet and its three virtual equivalents to proceed towards the targets.

reply to post by Insolubrious


Cool post that I found pretty interesting.

To answer your question, with my opinion:
Is it impossible that a pod, like picture here, was on one, or more, of the planes that crashed into the WTC? No, I don't think it's impossible but highly, highly implausible.

I know one picture reportedly shows a pod of some kind under one wing. Personally, I don't see that in the pictures and I think the explanations around refractive errors as well as other video angles show this to be a photographic anomaly.

That's my two cents.

P.S. NASA crashed a remote controlled 727 (I think 727) years ago as part of a study they were doing....I believe they were trying to find a jet fuel that is less flammable during a crash.