Was watching this Tepanachi 8 hr DVD and saw those military trains with a whole train full of military hardware including rocket lauching HUMMVEE’s, armoured vehicles and even tanks.
So my question is this, what security measure do the railroad company provide to stop terrorists from just hijack a trainful of military hardware? It looks pretty dangerous to me as in some sections in the middle of a desert, the train slows down and then people can just jump on board and hijack it. Think about all those military hardware which is enough to outfit a whole army division.
Just think for one moment they stopped one at Jacksonville Arkansas and started the hi-jack process… there is going to be a response VERY fast dont know what form it will take but most certainly will NOT give these bad boys any chance to unload the stuff. Even if they did unload it, they need more time and support to actually activate the durn vehicle and ready it for combat.
Even then the vehicles may not be totally “UP” or properly supplied with everything required for operations on the side of the track.
The first people to know what’s going on will be the Towermen and they have the control, not the bad guys who took over the train.
A recent NS train I saw that was carrying M1 Abrams tanks had a DOD caboose at the end. My guess would be armed guards on it. I am sure that NS Police also were on it and directly involved in trackside security.
Exactly, they can’t go forward with the train or they will rearend the train in front of them. They can’t stop to unload it or they will get rearended by the following train.
The best they could hope for is to stop it long enough to unload a single specific piece of equipment.
Kind of difficult to hijack significant number of vehicles from train carrying military equipment and make a quick unnoticed getaway. As noted by other poster equipment may not be totally ready to hit the dirt running.
Interesting question though. In the former Soviet Union during the cold war everything of conceiveable military value was guarded. This was before Afghanistan and the Chechan wars. Infrastructure(bridges, railway depots, terminals, dams, power plants, etc.) was guarded, don’t know whether the security measures were to protect military assets from external or internal threats.
I had a similar thought after watching a cable channel story on refurbishing Abrams tanks. In this program tanks when completed were shipped out via rail(don’t think truckers are quite up to this task in quantity). It would seem a bad guy could research route from generic locations and contractors mentioned to take out the tank train over a high bridge or terrain routing which would favor displacing train and tanks into ravine or river for example. One would hope some measure of security is in place to frustrate such U.S. based attacks by sleeper cells or domestic crazies.
There’s a lot easier targets to hit than a train.A well stocked gun store would be more valuable than a big ole tank with no shells or ammo in it. Where you gonna hide a train load of A1A’s from satalights or A-Wacs planes.
Nothing much of use to small bands of terrorists. No ammunition is shipped along with the vehicles. It would take a huge, well-financed group to pull off such a hijacking, to include take-over of the railroad’s control system, so that the train could go somewhere hidden for unloading. Otherwise, like everyone else said, the terrorists would be surrounded before they got the first vehicle off the first flatcar. Easier to just blow up a bridge or otherwise derail the train–but even that’s not easy.
I suppose these days the terrorists are more interested in weapons of mass destruction rather than just a tank or two causing traffic jams.
However, it had been shown in various movies such as ‘Under Siege Two’ and ‘Broken Arrow’, terrorists had decide to use trains as their means of transport across the US carrying out their terror strikes.
So never under estimate the bad guys! They could hijack one and then meet up with their ‘comrades’ with necessary equipment required at certain point and then launch an armour assult on a huge densily populated city or use those to take control over a nuke missile base etc and etc.
So far I have not heard any real security measure that’s gonna stop the scenarios been carried out from the above two movies. On both occasions, trains were been hijacked, one carrying a nuke and one used to control a EMP weapon satellite. Both involved highly organised terrorist groups and in ‘Under Siege Two’, they demonstrated a similar point to hit a army reserve base to get some Huey’s. Imagine a armoured battalion even without live ammo, they can get in practically any other military installation with little effort. Also the whole thing started because I actually saw rocket launchers installed on the HUMMVEE’s and how hard would it be to start a HUMMVEE? I imagine some diesel should do it. Most military vehicle don’t even require keys or they are all keyed alike, thye jut like race cars that had ignition switches and ignition button.
I think if they really want to do it, they can and they will. Before 9/11, would you imagine someone would use a commercial jet as a missile?
I hope the FBI is reading this thread because I really think this is a real potential situation and real security ought to be considered as per my post above this one, it is possible and been shown in various movies.
I would imagine they’d have several layers of security for military transports, things like armed guards in the train itself, local PDs securing areas where the shipment would go near urban centers (making sure no railfans with their cameras breach the security perimeters, that osrt of thing). I wouldn’t be surprised if the DOD had access to satellite coverage for the train as well. Even the route selected for the train would be chosen with security criteria in mind.
And even if you could hijack a train, where would yo go? A train that size can’t be hidden from view (and you can be damn sure it’s fitted with GPS), the military could mobilize any amount of countermeasures, right up to blowing up the tracks in front of you (it’d be a disastrous wreck, sure, but that might be the lesser of two evils).
There’s an occasional hubbub in Europe about nuclear waste trains, which have pretty much all of the above security measures in place. They’re also driven very slow, to lessen the risk of accidents and ensuring the security net keeps up every step of the way. I’d imagine they drive local dispatchers and engineers barmy by messing up timetables, too.
Sure, it’s been done in the movies, but then again, so’s travelling in time.
Hehehe…now there is nothing for you to worry about that at all!
A aircraft carrier travels as a ‘group’ with 2 nuclear hunter/killer subs, 3 destroyers, one Aegis cruiser, support vessels and most of them have over 100 aircraft with all capabilities flying 24 hour patrols in shifts and F-14’s can hit targets over 100 miles out and that’s plus their crusing range of over 600 miles. Most invaders get blown out of the sky before they even know what happened. Nothing can get close to it even if you try. Let’s say you are so lucky that you got through all that and at the last minute, you will still be blasted to pieces by the Phanlax defence system. And at 40+ knots top speed and 30+ knots crusing speed, it can outrun most civilian or commercial vessels anyway.
Well, see, that’s why I raise this question, in the DVD, there were no armed guards in sight and the cameraman was able to get right next to it while it travelling at the yard limited of 10 MPH passing some other train in a siding or some other train overtaking it I can’t remember.
All I am saying is, before 9/11, people are dismissing the idea of a commercial aircraft been used as a weapon and some even laughed at the idea while they know all along that it’s fast, big, full of highly flammable jet fuel and people can just take a knife right out of their lunch boxes.
Can you say “air strike” within minutes? That’s exactly want would happen…I would not be surprise if these military trains didn’t have air cover near by.
If it’s just conventional military hardware like vehicles or electronics, then most of it’s too bulky to get out of the train in a clandestine fashion. Weapons be sourced easier from somewhere else, robbing a military transport for them would be overkill when you can get them off the black market. As for the truly destructive things, those have another layer of security and paranoia folded in every time they’re moved an inch.
It’s possible to hijack a train, true. I wouldn’t be afraid, though. Human beings can’t live in fear. They exist in fear, true, but it’s not living.
Actually, what Einstein proved was that the speed of light is absolute, and that time slows down when approaching it. Under Einsteinian physics, travel faster than light is impossible, because a body moving at that speed would have an infinite mass (thanks E=mc2). As a corollary, time travel is impossible.
Also, Einsteinian physics are not the absolute truth of physics. Science evolves. It’s what makes it stronger than superstition or myth. Old certainties are replaced with new, more accurate certainties.
Several people have already mentioned that, despite all the hardware, such movements will not have any ammo available in the same shipment. Additional equipment, like sights and night vision systems, that is high value and easily carried will also be removed, stored and shipped separately.
In addition, anything that the military ships that they have concerns about typically will have a GPS satellite transponder attached.
Air cover? Highly unlikely, unless its a nuke shipment. Then it wouldn’t be nearly so obvious or slow-moving, either, as a trainload of tanks, etc on flatcars.
The military does a pretty good job of securing things. That’s their business. And I’m certain the DHS, the FBI, etc have all given plenty of thought to such things already. That is one reason Ebay won’t allow listing of switch keys any more, just as one example of the way some things have changed. I can imagine several scenarios that might be “problematic” for such shipments, but the kind of things you’re thinking about are far more the stuff of action movies than real life possibilities.