The scenario where law enforcement must stop a business jet from taking off. Here are the details:
The engines are starting and the boarding ladder has not begun retraction (i.e., the plane can't taxi until the ladder stows, locking the cabin door.
There are 6+ armed FBI agents forward of the port wing.
One agent yells, stop the plane. They start shooting.
The plane begins to taxi. Someone yells, shoot the fuel tank.
The p,ane is now about 100 feet away. An agent grabs a flare gun and shoots the jet fuel that has leaked from the plane.
The plane explodes as expected when the flames reach the tank.
So, there were six agents within 20 feet of both the nose wheel and port landing gear of a STATIONARY aircraft. Why did they not shoot the tires? I'm no pilot, but trust me, I can envison no possible way for that jet to take off with the nose gear being ground down to a stump.
HERE'S WHAT BOTHERS ME:
No one was fired for destroying a 20+ million dollar aircraft when replacing a <$500 tire would have worked.
They were given another plane.
Ironic Reference: Brilliant Minds, S15E10, "And in the end"
:-)
True. But, I really wanted them to put the bad guy to the needle.
That and similar scenarios play out in many movies and television shows. More often it's a car that they must stop. Why, oh why, does hollywood persistently depict people with hand guns standing up trying to shoot the driver? Playing the odds and the physics of a ballistic projectile passing though a melon-sized object moving through space on a non-ballistic trajectory, forces me to categorize the writers and technical advisors as lazy no nothings.
Eliminating the z-axis of the target by lying flat and siting the vehicles tires along the plane of the ground gives the shooter a vastly increased chance of flattening one or two tires (vehicle orientation at play) with each shot. Also, slight down elevation errors may still recover as the ricochet rebounds at its original angle of incidence.