Russia launches a devastating and deadly cyberattack against the US commercial aviation industry. The Next World War is a documentary series that takes a terrifying and realistic look at a hypothetical Third World War scenario.
Background:
As always, each episode starts with an idea. For Episode 11 my idea was, "what if in retaliation and to throw political sand in the gears, Russia launches a cyberattack on the US commercial aviation industry?" And as always, the next step is, "OK... so how would they do that?" I role-played several scenarios, starting with shutting down the NOTAM or reservation systems (though not through cyberattacks, both systems have experienced temporary failures before that essentially halted or disrupted air traffic). Then I turned to flight performance data that provides the crew with the information needed to properly set up the aircraft for takeoff. At first I considered just "killing" the system, which would have slowed and disrupted operations. But then a thought struck me. What if instead of killing the system, the system provided the crew with bad (dangerous) data? What would happen? In the vast majority of cases (99%), not much. But if takeoff performance was critical because of a shorter runway, high density altitude, high heat and humidity and a new-ish crew who haven't flown into that airport often, well then you might have .5% that don't discover the issue until they are at rotate (Vr) speed and at that speed, there isn't enough runway left to stop. At that point, the crew is committed to takeoff, however anemic that is. With approximately 45,000 flights a day and a bit of back-of-the-napkin math, you could assume that roughly 2000-ish planes could be preparing to takeoff at any given (day) time. Take .5% of those and you get 10 aircraft that would pass through each ‘swiss cheese’ hole toward a crash.
Here's a good article that gives a bit more detail of the risks:
www.ainonline....
Now, some might later argue that this couldn't happen. And on a technical level either now or by 2032, that might be. This episode is not meant to be a technical white paper. For me, as with every episode, it has to answer the question, "is this plausible?" The answer I've found based on the information I've learned, is yes. Whether it's my approach, or some other, the possibility of an attack on the commercial aviation industry is very plausible and real. And because my series is meant to be a cautionary tale, let's hope we catch and close those holes before this episode becomes something less than fiction.
Commentary:
The settings in the cockpit do not reflect actual settings. I only have so much time to learn all the things and so I have to prioritize where that time goes. Learning to configure a passenger jet wasn't one of them.
Careful viewers will note that though the narration states runway 30 at Tucson, the graphics in X-Plane show runway 29. That's because shifts in the Earth's magnetic field over time require runway number changes and so the download of the Tucson Airport had old data.
For those who know X-Plane and wondering where the "explosion" came from because X-Plane doesn't model them: the explosion was green-screened in ARMA3 and edited in.
The runway overrun graphic is a dramatization. That said, the "lie" would have to be 20% or greater to cause a possible overrun.
The uniforms for the pilots are what I could get.
There is yet no model (that I'm aware of) for a sub-launched hypersonic missile in Cold Waters, DCS or ARMA3. I had to improvise. The booster phase shown is actually a Russian SLBM. Luckily, someone did create the glide vehicle model in DCS, so this video is a blend.
For episode time reasons, I could not get into the effects on the aviation industry and the economy as a whole after the attack, which would be massive.
This video was created in part using content of Bohemia Interactive a.s. Copyright © 2018 Bohemia Interactive a.s. All rights reserved. www.bistudio.com This video was created in part using content of Eagle Dynamics SA Copyright © 1991-2024 All rights reserved. www.digitalcom...
Other games and software used include:
Command: Modern Operations by Slitherine Software www.slitherine...
Digital Combat Simulator | DCS World | Combat Simulator by Eagle Dynamics www.digitalcom...
Cold Waters
killerfishgame...
Map.Army www.map.army/
Voice Over: elevenlabs.io/
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program www.gimp.org/
Davinci Resolve www.blackmagic...
High Tension by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommon...
29 сен 2024
