Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!uokmax!occrsh!att!cbnews!military From: jb7m+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon C. R. Bennett) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: The Channel Tunnel Message-ID: <11280@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 9 Nov 89 15:34:13 GMT References: <11203@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 37 Approved: military@att.att.com From: "Jon C. R. Bennett" >It seems to me that if it is >completed, it will be a perfect target for terrorists. All it needs is a car >full of baddies at each end, armed with assault rifles and probably grenades, >and equipped also with radios or good watches for synchronisation, and they >could hold the whole tunnel to ransom. I belive that it is to be a train tunnel, so it will be possible to employ metal detectors, X-ray machines and exposive sniffers. >Especially if they can get hold of enough explosive, of sufficient power, >to put a hole in the tunnel. The entrances to the tunnel are not near the coast, so delivering an explosive device to a section of the tunnel under water would require stoping a train in the tunnel. You would also need a very powerful charge since the tunnel is either in clay or bedrock for the whole trip, which I belive make a terminal falure impossible (it would certinaly be fixable). Also would you want to be in the tunnel with the expolsives? Also, if you blow the tunnel you cut off any escape. The IRA tends not expend it's members on one way trips. >So where have I gone wrong? Is such an attack impossible? Or are we giving the >IRA an offer they cannot refuse? I suspect that the SAS is already making contingancy plans, for just such situations. Jon C. R. Bennett Operations System Programmer CMU Computer Science jcrb@cs.cmu.edu #include