Here are a few interesting and long security related documents which have recently become available. They are all in PDF format:
- American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
- A History of U.S. Communications Security (Volumes I and II); the David G. Boak Lectures
- “A Look at Terrorist Behavior: How They Prepare, Where They Strike,” by Brent Smith, National Institute of Justice Journal, No. 260, 2008.
- “How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida,” by Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, RAND Corporation, 2008.
I will post something more original as soon as possible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/nyregion/17crashcnd.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Milan, if I remember correctly you argued in one of our conversations that a water emergency landing would almost automatically kill all passengers. I am just wondering whether you could share your thoughts with us on the incident in New York.
The most accessible source making that claim is this Economist article, which states:
“In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.”
Either the plane that landed in the Hudson wasn’t ‘wide-bodied’ or The Economist and a couple of other sources I read earlier are wrong in their assessment.
Here is another post discussing water landings and commercial aircraft. This comment includes several other examples of water landings with less than 100% lethality.
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…
Everything you need to know about bird strikes, water landings, and other airplane emergencies.
Christopher Beam | explainer | Thursday, 8:53 PM ET
The ditching of an airliner into the Hudson river in New York, in which all 155 passengers and crew escaped alive, has been hailed as a textbook example of landing on water.
…
[He] landed at precisely the right speed, completely under control, wings totally level. If one wing dips and catches the water, the aeroplane cartwheels, breaks up and some people would definitely have died.”
The CIA has just declassified six (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) documents about World War I security techniques. (The media is reporting they’re CIA documents, but the CIA didn’t exist before 1947.) Lots of stuff about secret writing and pre-computer tradecraft.