Failures Of Communication
The short-lived security alert occasioned by a despondent pilot of a light aircraft making threats to crash into the Auckland Skytower provided New
Zealand authorities with an excellent live action drill in emergency preparedness and threat assessment. The Skytower
was evacuated with little complication and no injuries, and besides some frazzled nerves and a contrite man wading
ashore from the wreckage of his ditched plane to face criminal charges, no one was the worse for wear.
Even so, a number of questions have been raised by the event, not all of which have been answered satisfactorily. Let’s
start with the easy part of the discussion.
Several commentators have opined that this event shows how foolish it was to decommission the tactical air wing of the
NZRAF, including its trainers. In their view tactical strike aircraft could have intercepted and shot down the single
engine Cessna, and the absence of an interceptor capability will only encourage more threats (or strikes) against New
Zealand landmarks by persons of various and mixed motivations.
This opinion is wrong. Even if New Zealand had tactical fighter aircraft based in Whenuopai, and they were scrambled
upon notice of the intruder Cessna, there would be no time for them to intercept the plane before it crashed into the
Skytower. Besides the fact that it would take less than five minutes for a light plane to travel from Ardmore airport to
the Skytower if the pilot was purposeful in his suicidal intent (which leaves no time for tactical aircraft to be
alerted and deployed even if fully fuelled and armed on a stand-by basis), the Cessna was travelling too low and too
slow to be effectively engaged by tactical combat aircraft. Travelling at less than 150 knots, the Cessna was close to
the stalling speed of all jet interceptors, which means that it would be impossible for tactical fighters to line up a
clean close shot at the target.
This would force them to try to engage the Cessna from above and away. Doing so with machine gun fire would rain hot
lead onto the streets of Auckland; using a heat- seeking missile would be equally problematic due to the presence of
many other thermal signatures in a congested urban environment. Given the slow speed of the Cessna, that would likely
entail the air-to air engagement becoming a collateral air to ground exercise. Even if fire could be delivered
accurately on target, the broken up and possibly fiery Cessna would disperse and fall into that urban environment
(defined here as the area within two nautical miles of the Skytower mast). Only if the Cessna was above 500 meters and
flying some distance (over water, preferably) from the city could it have been targeted effectively from the air. In
this instance that is not what the pilot was doing. A pilot with bad intent or simply wary would understand the
underlying logic of this equation.
Some have argued that rotary platforms could have intercepted the Cessna. There is merit to the idea that an attack
helicopter could have done the job, although there again the prospect of downing the plane would require careful
consideration (as would any attempt to bring it down using ground fire) Instead, the Eagle Police chopper shadowed the
Cessna, and no attempt was made (even if considered) to put snipers on Eagle or on other tall structures. That would
have been impractical in the extreme due to the “ground effect” mentioned earlier, which would have serious political
repercussions. More to the point, it is not a contingency that specialised police detachments train for in New Zealand,
and so they are reluctant to risk doing it.
In any event, the Armed Offenders Squad was not called into action and since there is no tactical air wing there was no
alternative option to use force to end the incident. As for the Police counter-terror squad, it is an analytic rather
than an operational unit that assesses threats rather than counters them. Thus, the counter-terror squad was not
involved, nor should they have been. As for the failure to see the incident coming due to faulty intelligence, the point
is moot. Short of a warning by the pilot or someone close to him who knew his intentions, there was no way to get prior
notice of the event because he acted impulsively. There was no intelligence failure.
But there are other areas of concern. The Cessna flew around for more than an hour—and may even have landed and
refuelled--before being spotted. Lack of communication between various levels of authority prevented effective
administration of the emergency event. The reason for this appears to be rooted in fundamental flaws in the nation’s
command, control and communication systems, specifically communication between different security agencies and whoever
are the national security command authorities.
The first time the Cessna was spotted was by air traffic control at Auckland airport, when it meandered across the
Mangere flight paths. Until it did so it went undetected. From then the picture gets darker. The Civil Aviation
Authority and the Police apparently have no way to integrate, much less coordinate their communications systems so that
in this instance the Police could talk to the pilot directly. This is important because the Civil Aviation Authority has
no personnel professionally competent in dealing with suicidal pilots, but the police do have personnel trained in
dealing with suicidal people. Moreover, establishing direct contact with the source of a potential terrorist threat
rather than having information relayed to them by air traffic control would have better served the police for
counter-measure planning. Having air traffic control relay information about an agitated pilot in the middle of their
other business is quite different than hearing from him directly.
It does not appear that many other security agencies were alerted to the threat, which is puzzling because a worse case
scenario would require civil defence operations that would likely exceed the capabilities of the on-ground Auckland
police and emergency personnel. Unless other agencies have played things very close to the vest in public, there are no
reports of emergency mobilisation response teams being alerted or activated during the incident.
It is worrisome that the Auckland police communications centre apparently does not have the ability to integrate its
communications channels and radio frequencies with those of civilian aviation, or commercial aviation for that matter.
This is both easy to accomplish (almost any radio scanner will do) and is usually lesson one in national security
contingency planning. One would think that the police in New Zealand’s largest city, in which a majority of commercial
and private aviation takes place, would have the ability to monitor and communicate directly with aviation frequencies.
If they can, then something else interfered with their ability to do so in this instance.
The problems do not stop there.
When asked the following day if she was aware of the potential terrorist threat to a New Zealand landmark, the Prime
Minister stated that she had no knowledge of the event until the press mentioned it. The Diplomatic Protection Service,
her bodyguards, apparently were notified but decided not to inform the Prime Minister. Perhaps it was the excitement of
election night, but one would have thought that regardless of occasion an incident such as this—in which someone flying
an aircraft threatens to crash it into the ninth tallest structure in the southern hemisphere, in the middle of New
Zealand’s major city, with potentially catastrophic results—would have merited a brief mention to the head of the
country’s security forces. That the police, her bodyguards, or any other security agencies choose not to do so is of
concern. If there is a channel of communication that funnels all security information to her bodyguards without parallel
lines of communication, and if it is the bodyguards who make a threat assessment and determine whether to inform her or
not of potential threats, then the problem is grave. In a phrase, the DPS becomes a praetorian guard around the Prime
Minister, which augers poorly for all concerned.
Take one example. Assuming the improbable, if there was a chance to shoot down the plane from the ground or air as a
last resort, who would give that order?—assuming national security authorities were informed in a timely fashion about
the nature of the threat. A police sergeant on the beat? A district commander? The Minister of Defence? The Chief of the
Armed Forces? Michael Cullen? Winston Peters? As it stands, it appears that there is no clearly established chain of
command, lines of authority or channels of communication in New Zealand’s air defence system (if there is one), and
perhaps in its security apparatus as a whole. After all, this is a country where foreign governments electronically
eavesdrop on international communications from New Zealand soil without sharing information with the national
authorities, and where the head of the SIS can withhold classified intelligence information from the Prime Minister and
Parliament (his ostensible overseers). Now it seems that even basic operational management—the three C's of command,
control and communications (C3)—are conspicuous by their absence, at least when it comes to assessing and countering
airborne terrorist threats.
As things turned out, all ended well. The pilot was upset about the break-up of his marriage, not a member of al-Qaeda.
He was flying a light aircraft, not a commercial airliner, so at worst he would have dented the Skytower rather than
demolished it (although the possible harm to innocent people in the Skytower and adjoining streets could have been
significant). The evacuation went relatively smoothly, and the police “wait and see” (or perhaps resigned to the
inevitable) approach eventually brought the incident to a peaceful conclusion without fatalities. There is merit in
that.
However, questions have to be raised as to the preparedness of New Zealand’s security forces for a threat of this kind.
After 9/11 one would have thought that would be of utmost priority for those charged with the nation’s security.
Apparently, on an election night four years after the fact, it was not.
Beyond active defences such as increased security around airports, deployment of fighter jets or attack helicopters and
closer scrutiny of civil aviation licenses, a passive defence approach might work better in a political environment such
as Aotearoa. Tall platform laser light disorientation systems (based upon the technology used in music light shows and
military targeting devices) may be one such option. Triggered upon intrusion into airspace to within one or more
nautical miles of a sensor point (say, the Skytower mast), focused and random targeted laser beam systems have day or
night capability to disrupt evil-minded aviators, or at least the emotionally despondent who can fly on their own. The
cross-section of laser beams will blind the pilot and obscure his path to the target. The technology is wide-spread,
commercially available and could be coordinated from a command centre either close to or far from the actual theatre of
operations. The potential of such a system is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first glance, and would be less
expensive and morally problematic to operate than airborne interceptors.
In the end, there is much to be learned from this incident. The C3 issue needs to be addressed as a priority, and
consideration of both active and passive counter-measures is worth further discussion. In the meantime, though, it looks
like we will have to cross our fingers and pray the next time someone decides to buzz a major landmark in this land of
the long white cloud.
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Paul G. Buchanan is Director of the Working Group on Alternative Security Perspectives at the University of Auckland.
His latest book, With Distance Comes Perspective: Essays on Politics, Security and International Affairs (Digital
Publishing Group) is being launched on September 27 in the Fale Pacifika at the University of Auckland.
ENDS