I was wondering…
What would a world-renowned security expert make of the plans to arm Blackheath with missiles?
So I emailed him:
I’m a big fan of your security essays, and subscribe to your weekly Crypto-gram.
The UK government has recently decided to place surface to air
missiles in my local park, to protect us against terrorist attacks
during the Olympics.I was wondering if you’d be interested in writing something about this
as a tactic to increase security. Does it matter if the missiles are
loaded? Is it the right thing to do? etc etc..
Here’s the reply:
Sounds like a dumb idea to me.
Short and to the point. We always protect against the previous terror threat. See this essay, for example:
Voting for missile defense makes for better campaigning than increasing intelligence funding. Elected officials want to do something visible, even if it turns out to be ineffective.
Something to ask Heidi Alexander on her trip around the houses today:
Licensed under a 
The Blackheath Bugle 
i am SO angry! There, feel better now.
It does seem rather unnecessary. Shooting down a plane onto London would be just as random as the attack itself and multiply the damage/loss of life 2x over if it were brought down after the attack.
However, in military thinking, as in chess and nuclear defence theory, (but unlike hanging..) it may act as a deterrent.
Unless it is unguarded.. In which case it becomes a new threat.
Yeah, the existence of missile defences will alter the calculus: if your purpose is to wipe out the stadium during the opening ceremony, it would be hard to do so with an aircraft if you know the defences are there to shoot down your hijacked 747 even at the last minute. It means you look for other ways, but restricting the avenues of approach does make the security problems easier to control. Stopping parking outside the stadium won’t stop car or truck bombs for example, but it makes their planting harder, with more planning required, which
The sainted Bruce is not God’s gift to all security questions Mr Bugle :-)
That being said, I really cannot see why a SAM unit should be surrounded by unarmed guards either….
Been doing a little Googling – from here it looks as if the recoil from missiles being fired might not do Bazalgette’s Southern High Level Sewer any good. How sensible is it to locate your rocket-launchers near or over a sewer?
When all else fails, clutch at the final straw of Bazalgette’s Southern High Level Sewer. Nice one Indigo!
I trust that NOGOE will be filing a writ with the High Court to defend the sewer’s inviolable right to sewer-ness?
But wait – were any Irish labourers used in the construction of the Southern High Level Sewer? That might abrogate the sewer’s rights under British law.
Please. A missile effectively has no recoil, it’s self propelling by rocket. If the rocket exhaust from a 50kg missile is enough to wipe out our sewers, then most of the TA centre should have collapsed into a hole decades ago
? Do the TA use real equipment?
As opposed to what?
Imaginary equipment?
“I slice your arm with my Jedi Weapon!”
“No, my Star Trek forcefield saves me!”
I think they use real equipment from our current Earth time frame.
I am trying to get people to ask questions. I may not be doing this well but that is my aim. Two years ago, the membership of both the Blackheath Society and the Friends of Greenwich Park voted against Greenwich Park being the 2012 equestrian venue. Their executive committees have acted like patriarchs and completely ignored/gone against that mandate. If that happened in a trade union or even a student union, everyone would be asking questions. But not in these amenity societies. If the membership had demanded that their executives honour the mandate from the membership, we might not now be having missiles on Blackheath.
The Olympics “mission creep” has been incredible. Far from the Olympics events being confined to Greenwich Park, now LOCOG/the Olympics has taken over nearly every other sizeable green space around here for the whole of summer months – preventing people playing sport in the places where they usually play sport, ironically. Now we are to have missiles, and the local MPs were not consulted so were not in a position to voice and get answers to their constituents’ concerns. What if the mission creep applies to the missiles, too? People have to ask questions or have only themselves to blame if they don’t like what happens.
The last word :-)
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/mod-unveils-surface-air-cockneys-201204305175/
Briliant!