Remote Flying of Aircraft or Drones

I'm not sure most people realize either then or now that the planes that flew into the Twin Towers on 9-11-01 had the emergency capability of being flown remotely from the ground. This came into being after several "Airplane" movies in the 1960s and 1970s and one of them depicted both pilot and co-pilot of a large jet passenger plane ordering the same fish dinner and both dying leaving no one with the capacity to fly those planes. So, by the mid to late 1990s domestic aircraft (as well as military ones) were fitted with remote control technology to be flown from the ground in "emergencies". So, it is possible now to fly most domestic passenger planes from the ground both in take-off, flying and landing in an emergency or even in a war.



So now, the concept of a passenger plane being used as a missile to destroy an object in the air or ground has become a potential weapon even though most countries don't talk about this much. For example, extensive testing of flying planes remotely has been done by the British government since 9-11 because of the "crazy new technology for warfare" demonstrated by 9-11 by Al Qaeda in 2001.

So, it might have been possible for Al Qaeda to have hacked the software and flown these planes into the Twin Towers. But because this technology was more secret then it wouldn't have been allowed in the newspapers at that time except by people who understood the actual developments in technology around the world at that time.

Also, now likely many many nations have been experimenting with this kind of technology because it is much less expensive to do this than to create an autonomous drone. A remote controlled aircraft is much easier to develop than an autonomous drone and probably less than 10% to 1% of the expense developing the technology. So, I think you will see this particular technology travel around the globe now eventually to all countries.

However, this brings up the same kind of problem that we had with 9-11 which is the "Trojan Horse" idea in warfare. If a passenger plane is actually a weapon of destruction in disguise (as literally all passsenger planes belonging to U.S. Air Lines likely already are what does that mean?

It means in peacetime that airliners will ferry people to wherever they want to go but during wartime it might mean something entirely different to all nations on earth. So, it is not only the drones that are potentially dangerous in wartime now it is also all passenger planes outfitted with the capacity to be flown remotely during an emergency similar to drones.

I could envision  government putting a pilot on board and maybe even passengers and no one would know what this plane was doing until it crashed into something important. In other words the next 9-11 here on earth there might be no warning at all just like with the first two planes that struck on 9-11. And this could potentially happen anywhere anytime. So, this is something for us all to be thinking about.

I know in my own life I usually prefer to drive somewhere if I have the time rather than to be worrying about this a little every time I get on a passenger jet. And I'm someone who flies at least 3 to 5 times round trip a year as it is.