I’m not sure what possible risk there was to our aircraft. Specifically from a missile launch in NK.
I’m not saying there are no risks, but I can’t think of any.
I’m not saying there are no risks, but I can’t think of any.
I can't see any way planes in Western US airspace could possibly interfere with tracking an NK launched ICBM, even by clutter, except maybe in the last minutes of the terminal phase of warhead descent at which point any defense (active or civil or both) would already have to have been committed to do any good.
Grounding planes is to mitigate risk to the people on the planes, and maybe to clear lines of fire for anti-missile systems (which is mostly about protecting people who aren't on the planes, but incidentally also protects those on the planes, too.)
Sure, NORAD probably tracked the plane from whatever airport it departed from, but during the missile test they probably want to have their personnel focus every second of their attention on the missile and not on checking some flight path.
But NORAD said they didn't ask for it:
The official says it was not a national ground stop and may have been issued by a regional air traffic control facility.
“No warning was issued by NORAD HQ,” regarding a potential threat to the US, according to Captain Pamela Kunze, the chief NORAD spokesperson.
I'm not an expert in any of those things, but that's the best I can come up with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
Looks like they may have launched a hypersonic missle that reached speeds of ~Mach 10[1], and the US (publicly, at least) seems to be lagging behind China and Russia in Hypersonic R&D - at least as of 2019[2].
How long would it take for a missile traveling at Mach 10 to reach a point where a high-altitude EMP attack[3] would cripple the west coast of the US?
Is that time longer than it would take for aircraft to return to a place where they could land? If NORAD spots a bogey moving that fast, is the rule right now just... everything stops until we understand what's happening?
Would love for someone who knows about hypersonics, NK missle capabilities, EMP attacks, etc. generally to say more.
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-launches-p...
[2] - https://www.defensenews.com/naval/the-drift/2019/11/15/dont-...
[3] - https://spectrum.ieee.org/one-atmospheric-nuclear-explosion-...
There's a lot of noise about admittedly really impressive low-altitude air-breathing scramjets, but - as your articles point out - those are still a long way away. The war hawks like to complain that we're not spending sufficiently many billions on developing futuristic hypersonic scramjet missiles. They point to our lack of a working scramjet as evidence that we're doing poorly. And look! North Korea's launched a hypersonic missile, China's launched hypersonic test missiles, Russia's launching hypersonic missiles; we're behind in the next war and it hasn't even started yet!
But those are just orbital or sub-orbital rockets at 50-100km altitude. Of course they're hypersonic, but that's not really that difficult - just build a big rocket, go up for a while, then turn sideways. We've been doing it since the 50s, tech is good enough now that relatively small companies like Firefly Space are launching small satellites to LEO with Series A fundraising of just $75 million. Tada! Hypersonic! The main point is that everyone has the capability to launch lots of these simple rockets, which can be devastatingly effective. Not as effective as highly steerable reentry vehicles or hypersonic scramjets, but enough that no one wants to be a target.
Give the timing, uncertainty, countermeasures, and consequences of not intercepting... "Your flight leaves 30 minutes later" is a small price to pay vs "Passenger airliner shot down."
Airliners carry less than 1,000 people. Usually a lot less.
Nukemap says 10kt on downtown LA would result in about 71,000 immediate casualties.
Would you want to be in the air when someone at NORAD has to make a call on something that may or may not be a passenger airliner?
I guess that's the smallest of your worries if you are hit by a nuke.
Well.. from what you posted I guess it depends on if you are in the plane or not. It sounds like you could be at a distance where you survive the blast but are impacted by the EMP and it would probably suck to be at 30k feet in a plane that is hit by an EMP.
Even if a plane is hit by an EMP I believe the engines will keep working and the plane will have backup controls. Unless it's a Boeing of the newer generation where everything is electrical/digital. And even if everything stops working it will keep gliding unless at an odd angle/speed at the moment of the hit. That said loss of instruments and radio would be painful. Components getting damaged depends on the magnitude of the EMP and a weak pulse might cause only transitory malfunctions.
Note: my knowledge on this subject is superficial and I'm probably wrong.
NK nuclear armed and, has the estimated ability to hit the West Coast of the US with ICBMs, and is believed to be able to make warheads small enough to mount on its ICBMs now. (The first two have been true for quite a few years now, the last is more recent.)
The threat to people in planes is at least twofold:
One: EMP from a nuclear blast is not a good thing for aircraft.
Two: People on the ground can shelter to mitigate some of the risk from a confirmed incoming attack, people in planes cannot.
It's not exclusively about the risk of a jet being hit in the air. But you don't want to route a bunch of jets to land in a city that no longer exists.