I don't think anyone these days will deny that this type of air defense is now a necessity. I just wonder how effective they would be against a small threat like a UAV or "quadcopter" carrying a little package right into an open air stadium?
Apparently there's also some concern that a missile firing would leave a shower of debris, which raises the spectre of a false-trigger should some joker use a small RC or UAV plane as a joke - or as Charlie Stross says in his blog post, Olympics 2012: A Bruce Schneier Moment:
f one of those things is ever fired, either in anger or by accident, it'll shower white-hot supersonic shrapnel across the extremely crowded residential heart of a city.
Hmm. It's a good thing I'm a novelist who dabbles in technothrillers, not a terrorist. If I was a terrorist I'd be licking my lips, trying to work out how to trigger a missile launch. Using a motor-powered model aircraft, free flight design (no radio controls to jam) aimed vaguely towards the Olympic stadium, with a nice radio beacon or some sort of infra-red source (a flare, perhaps) on its tail to make it easy to track? These missiles will be the close-in option, because we know the RAF will already be flying combat air patrols over London; they won't have much time to evaluate threats or respond intelligently. So launch from the back of a panel van, like the IRA mortar attacks on places like Heathrow or 10 Downing Street. The twist in the scheme would be to aim past the missile launchers along a vector that would attract a hail of hypervelocity missile launches in the direction of, say, a DLR station at rush hour.
www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)
