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Comment by badfutureahead | Hacker News Reader

With FlightRadar24 historical data you already know exactly where regular flights will be, so you just wait there. The only thing left is that the pilot will try to dodge you, but then you have automatic drone control versus human (with low visibility).

I agree with you that this is a high touch attack, a kind of "drone 9/11", versus other low hanging fruits like dropping drones on peoples head.

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Drones have 10 to 30 minute loiter time, and they don't reach 10k feet. You're overestimating the ability of small craft to detect, track, and even reach the operational area of large passenger jets. These things are moving at hundred or more meters per second vs a drones ... 15? By the time a vision system had enough pixels on target to detect, it would have seconds to move into position in front of it. And how exactly is it supposed to know the jets velocity and heading?

Let alone it must hit the inside of the engine to do more than become a scratch on the paint.

Still, takeoff and landing maybe ... But still this kind of visual detection, tracking, and maneuvering is harder than you think.

Humans aren't as regular as to allow this. The Mombasa attack failed because the pilot chose a different path that time, and that was an 'easy' attack (takeoff where the plane is slow, using military-grade AA missiles far quicker than any drone).

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