The FAA Can’t Save You - America Is Still Vulnerable to Airborne Terror
AMERICA UNDER SIEGE PHASE II: TERRORISM AS THE CATALYST EVENT
America learned the wrong lessons from September 11th, 2001
We hardened cockpit doors, built an alphabet soup of agencies, and trained the public to take their shoes off. What we did not do is fix the strategic vulnerability that made airborne terror effective in the first place. We created a system optimized to stop the last attack, not the next one.
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The uncomfortable truth is this: Federal Aviation Administration regulations and Transportation Security Administration checkpoints are theater layered on top of an aviation ecosystem that remains fragile, predictable, and exploitable.
And the enemy knows it.
Security Is Centralized — Terror Is Distributed
Post-9/11 aviation security is built on centralized control. Centralized radar. Centralized command. Centralized decision-making. Centralized airports. Centralized assumptions.
Modern terror networks operate the opposite way.
They are decentralized, adaptive, low-signature, and opportunistic. They don’t need to hijack a commercial airliner full of passengers anymore. That was a one-time psychological multiplier. Today’s attackers can generate the same or greater effect with smaller platforms, fewer people, and less exposure.
Security planners still think in terms of planes. Attack planners think in terms of airspace.
That gap is where danger lives.
STAND WITH THE MISSION …
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The Airspace You Don’t Think About
When Americans think “airborne terror,” they picture jets and terminals. The threat surface is far broader.
Small general aviation aircraft, charter operations, crop dusters, helicopters, privately owned turboprops, training flights, cargo feeders, and emerging unmanned platforms all operate in overlapping airspace with limited real-time scrutiny.
Many of these aircraft:
Launch from thousands of lightly monitored airfields
Require minimal screening or identity verification
Fly below primary radar coverage
Can loiter, divert, or disappear without immediate alarm
The FAA manages air traffic safety, not counterterror operations. That distinction matters.
The system assumes lawful intent by default. Terror exploits assumptions.
Technology Creates New Angles of Attack
Aviation security doctrine is still rooted in 2001 logic. Meanwhile, technology has sprinted ahead …
