(The amazing new Club House at Army-Navy Country Club that replaced the stately and crumbling old one that had its roots in the original 1924 structure. Photo ANCC.)
It is not the Ides of March until tomorrow- you know, the one in which the Bard commended us to beware, due to lean and hungry look of yon Cassius.
If I see him tomorrow, I will for sure let you know. Mr. Sluggo suggested we get together for lunch yesterday, and I was eager to catch up. He is under a regimen of care for one of those nasty cancer things, seems to be responding well, but I wanted to catch up.
Mr. Sluggo is a fighter pilot of the old school- he started out in F-8 Crusaders, a swift jet of a certain age whose operators were known to be of the wild-and-wooly old school. I read the NATOPS manual for the operation of that weapons system and was not surprised to see the notation in bold face that helpfully reminded Crusader jocks that in extremis, the airplane could always be used to ram an opponent.
Anyway, after the minor confusion of advancing age in linking up at the 1924 Lounge over at the Army-Navy Country Clubs posh new club house we tucked into the issues of the day. Naturally, aviation-related matters dominated the discussion. Sluggo left the cockpit to become an acquisition specialist, and he knows his stuff.
We talked about what might have happened to the missing Malaysian 777- I doubt that anyone is the counter-terror, security or aviation industry is talking about much else at the moment, as the jet and 230 passengers and crew remain un-located after almost a week.
Maria brought me a glass of Chardonnay and Mr. Sluggo opted for the iced tea. We talked about oncology and health, and the identity of some old shipmates on a digital image found on the laptop by the son of a recently deceased comrade.
“Note to self,” I said, taking a sip of wine and blinking at the brightness of the cold chilly day outside the window. “Get someone to destroy my computer the instant I am not able to sit in front of it.”
Sluggo laughed. He explained the whole catastrophic destruction theory, and the problems with it. Boeing knows how to build a structure, unlike the Airbus people, whose early 300 series jets had a distressing tendency to lose major flight surfaces due to de-lamination of structural spars. “American Flight 587 went into Sheepshead Bay after departing JFK because the spar in the tail delaminated and failed. Airbus fixed the problem, but who has time to look at the serial numbers to find out if the airplane you are getting on was built before or after? I told my friends to just not get on any Airbus 300.”
“I think that is what Iran Air was flying when they ran into USS Vincennes and got shot down,” I said. “And that may be why Iran was really behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie a few months later.”
“Could be. But this one is really strange. I really like it as a Bond thriller, Imagine this scenario: suppose some hacker used a zero-day exploit in the software to gain control of the aircraft and fly it remotely? This could be something entirely new.“
“I saw a lot of reporting recently about hackers and cars- apparently they were able to hack into the controls and apply the brakes and shut down the engines. But wouldn’t you still have to have people to subdue the crew?”
Mr. Sluggo shrugged. “I think you would still need someone on the inside to make it work, but you would not need a trained flight crew to do it, like 9/11. That would be the old way. Maybe there is something entirely new happening here.”
Maria the phlegmatic waitress asked us if we were ready to order for the third or fourth time, and we finally acquiesced. I went for the classic Caesar salad, and Sluggo opted for the Army-Navy Club sandwich. I sighed. That used to be my favorite order in the casual dining room in the old clubhouse. It comes with chips, not fries, but with three slices of bread, and spaghetti and meatballs the day before, I was way over the line on carbs for the week.
This is the way I remember the old clubhouse sandwich:
Three slices of toast interwoven with ham, turkey bacon and cheese, cut in quarters, toothpicks in each to hold it together with chips in the middle. Nice, predicable and tasty. Comfort food from the Old Club.
“But think about it. We have ACARs reporting that the aircraft was operated for as many as four hours after the transponders were shut off sequentially, which indicates it could not be one spontaneous catastrophic incident.”
“OK, OK, but why?”
“Well, imagine you are a hacking entity- maybe state sponsored, maybe not. Suppose you have developed software and hardware to intrude on fly-by-wire systems, specifically those used in Boeing aircraft, and you want to test it for future use.”
“All right. I am game- we have helpers on the jet to eliminate the crew. Maybe they gas everyone, incapacitate the flight crew. Then the ground controllers direct the plane to some remote place in the Indian Ocean where it will never be seen again and crash it into the sea? If you intended to land it and flew toward India or Pakistan the military radars would pick you up right away.”
“Very few people these days actually track anything with raw radar returns. But you could do it that way, driving it to deep water, hopefully never to be recovered. Just another mystery, though you would now know that the concept worked and is available for the next step- maybe another 9/11 that is even more spectacular.”
“You would need some deep pockets for that,” I said. “It would take George Soros or the Koch Brothers to bankroll it.”
“Or a nation state. Suppose you were Iran, knew the jet was coming, and had access to runways and hangars to conceal it once it was on the ground.”
“God, that sounds like a hallucination.”
“We won’t know until we get the cockpit voice and data recorders, and if whoever has the jet has access to it on the ground, those are long gone.”
“Ack.” I took a sip of wine and contemplated the possibilities. Maria returned with my salad, which looked good, but I was stunned when I saw what she slid in front of Mr. Sluggo: It was not the white bread quarters skewered with cellophane topped toothpicks.
This was a gigantic sandwich, split equally in two halves, rich with a layer of white chicken, and I could smell the bacon that layered lavishly across tomatoes and cheese and the dollop of mayonaise. Separating the two halves was a mound of those twice-cooked chips, dark and curled and inviting.
“Jesus,” I said. “That is a huge change. It looks delicious.”
“I will take half of it home,” said Sluggo.
“It would still make two sandwiches,” I said in wonder. “New building, new Executive Chef, new menu.”
“It’s change you can believe in,” said Mr. Sluggo.
I had to agree with him as I ate my lettuce. Maria boxed up the half and the remaining chips to take away, and we agreed to catch up in April.
I rose, remembering I had to contact my attorney on an unrelated matter. “Maybe we will know the answer to the mystery next month.”
“It took them 23 months to find the black boxes on that Air France jet that went down in the South Atlantic. They will figure this one out,” said Sluggo with confidence.
“I hope it is before whatever it is that comes next,” I said.
“Never can tell,” said Sluggo, and we walked out into the chill brightness of a winter that just won’t let go.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303