Well bombers do not have to be launching platform, it is with in the possibility for other large commercial aircraft/airliners to carry and launch such missiles. Besides the mechanical aspects one just needs the correct inputs/voltages/current to spin up the gyros and guidance systems. Wonderful thing of Soviet technology tends to take the low tech approach to issue resolution.

WMS

Safe carriage and separation of large, multi-ton objects at several hundred knots is not trivial. Unless you have tested it multiple times the most likely effect is that they strike each other or the carrier is destroyed by flutter during carriage. If you have tested it multiple times people are likely to hear about it.

Who the fuck is going to have both the capability to get nuclear weapons, very sophisticated (and expensive!) cruise missiles, and also wnt to actually fire them at the president of the united stars. You'd have to be retarded, or a james bond villian.

I think Hyzmarca misrepresents the challenges of jury rigging a homebuilt cruise missiles. Yes you can make a guidance system with low powered computing parts. However, that is actually a major software engineering challenge to make someone that will work most of the time. Then you have to master the major engineering challenge of making a guided rocket. This is very, very, very hard.

But it is a surmountable challenge, but you don't merely have to surmount it, you have to nail it, because unless you have a pretty big warhead, you'd need to get pretty close to the president to score a kill.

Finally, building a reliable explosive device that can be detonated inside a truck is actually pretty tough. It has eluded many a terrorist or they have blown themselves up - witness the fate of many IRA bombs and bombers or people in palestine.

Its tough stuff making it at home. And you need something that can survive being launched via rocket. Yeah. Right.

And even once you have the parts, you still have a significant SI task to get it all working together, and build some sort of delivery vehicle. You need an organization, and a pretty damn sophisticated one.

Even once you have an organization, people are going to notice you building and test these things, so either you fly blind without testing in which case it probably won't work, or you test it and probably get arrested.

Who are you correcting? I was responding to the "home made" cruise missile suggestions. Not many of those at Mach4, 250nM range. And even fewer carrying nuclear warheads. Frankly, if you're talking about defense against nuclear attack you're so far out of the FBI's remit as to be entirely off topic.



Not so. Most nukes are more likely to *not* go off than actually detonate, if they're mechanically disrupted.


Well, of course they aren't. They wouldn't stop an ICBM either.


I bet there's one off the coast pretty much any time the Pres is near enough for a Bear or a Blackjack to be at standoff range. Sitting in an Arleigh-Burke's VLC. I don't care how lo-tek the Russkies were, toting along a Kitchen under a wing isn't a trivial exercise in aerodynamics.

Again the mechanical aspects, I never said it would be easy or trivial, but doable.

WMS

That is why it would be easier to take a already tested cruise missile than to build one from scratch.

@Shiloh that correction was not at you. No defending the President from any attacks is well within their role, yes they may outsource to the various military organizations.

Reason a nuclear warhead is used in my examples is due the many issues of targeting a small moving target ie motorcade.

WMS

Posts about obscure intelligence agencies and working them in Shadowrun... to how to whack the Prez. Okayyyyy, scary thread drift. Backing away slowly now.

... and the answer is "powerbolt", delivered by a high-force summoned spirit of man.

I'm pretty sure you're all on a list somewhere now

Hell, I was probably on a few lists before I even got into Role Playing.

Seriously though, can you imagine how many mages are putting how many dice towards spell defense basically 24/7? Brings up the question though, how often will the prez actually do stuff in person, and how often would it be a trid phantasm? I mean sure, the 1% of the population of the room who is astrally aware would know (although I could imagine them saying 'no astral perception or projection is permitted during this speech as a security measure', then slamming anyone who breaks the rule), but the other 99% of the room and everyone watching the trid would have no idea.

hmm that sounds familiar to me. Lists being the operative word.

WMS

Honest misunderstanding, I was talking about the answer to the cruise missile. I´d use a Guardian spirit with Natural Weapon for the "other situation". If it wins initiative...

Ok @ those who want to keep discussing how to kill the prez: Plz open your own thread!

We're discussing the role of a fictional Secret Service in a fictional future polity known as the UCAS... and how an airburst nuke would probably do the trick.

Please, if stuff like this is enough to trigger notice of any kind I'd be on the list long before now. I think the post I made on another board a little while back on the best ways to carry out terrorist strikes in the the US - knock down electricity pylons, blow up the power sub-stations by the power plants or where stepped down near the cities, oil refineries or liquid natural gas depots, major gas or water pipes that supply large cities, key telecommunication hubs, driving a large truck full of AMFO into a major commuter tunnel and detonating it to collapse the tunel stc. - on targets that would cause a lot of dusruption yet are fairly lightly if at all guarded would have raised some flags way before plotting to kill the President would.

You'd like to think so wouldn't ya Woot, I love laughing at the expense of my government.

Any corporation that provides public service needs some form of secret service. You do not want the public to doubt the security of their level of service. Yet you need an active security force.

The department of Water Disposal was IIRC part of a Who hunts the Hunter?, demon-hunting in the severs for astronomic pay.

Matrix GridSec has to have ultra-hard strike teams to ensure that the infrastructure nodes are taboo for everyone. They would be paranoid about data security, so NO COMMENT is all ever said about them.

All corporations have intelligence divisions, nothing obscure about that. The corp specialities really show in their special assets, be it tech, magic, augmentations, weapons... much of the fluff is from older sources. Even with the outdated corp info, I recommend the Corporate Shadowfiles for SR economics. Pretty good stuff.

Many policlubs will finance some form of secret service, or at least have a few people with access to the shadow community and a network of snitches.

So we should be expecting a delay into your trip to the US this year? You know what they really do to those people they "interrogate" at the airport?

And that they really and within their full rights interrogate people at the airports?

About a year ago, I called a friend of mine while I had some time to kill in an airport. Pretty we start talking about game. Pretty quick I realize I'm saying things out loud in an airport like "Oh yeah, with your contacts getting termite is no issue, it's really nothing to cook" and "Mortors? It will take a bit, but it's totally do able. ... yeah, likely is the best way to get that target. ... yeah uhh huuu, ... yeah ... we're still go for monday"

Yep, that was the book. Department of Water and Wastewater (DWW).

And just when you thought Ghouls were bad.

Meep. It still occasionally hits me: the sense of detachment that allows us gamers to have such conversations in public. "And then I shot him in the face for being a tosser." And we wonder why we get funny looks.

If you want really funny looks, alternate between talking about weapons (SR) and how much funds one needs for retirement (real). You WILL notice that you are doing something wrong, noone is THAT uncouth.

Federal Marshalls are the enforcement arm of the Federal Court system. Which is why they do prisoner transport. They provide security for the courts, sieze property the courts declare forfit and hunt down people declare by the courts to be fugitives. The FBI does the investigative ,collect the evidence stuff. Marshalls don't need to sweat evidence. They're ordered to act and have the backing of the courts behind them. (I passed the written but there was a hiring freeze and I got into another line of work.)

For other agencies there's the British MI-5- the British FBI. and MI-6- Her Majesties Secret Service-
France's Deuxieme Bureau (hard case right wingers to oppose the openly socialist left in France.)
Israel's Mossad and of course whatever the flock the KGB is being called in 2070.

Then there aree more historical groups that could rise up from the dust.
Smersh. more properly division 6 of the MVD. A particulaly ruthless division of what became the KGB, under Beria in the early 1950's completely scary MF's. Believed to have been responsible for the death of Trotsky in Mexico and exterminating collaborators in the USSR as lands were taken back from the Nazi's.
This was disbanded when Krushchev came to power in an attempt to break the paranoid/death dealing way of life that had epitomised Soviet politics since 1918. As some Russians hark back to the "good ol' days" of vlast whose to say this wouldn't come back?

Interesting Modern Day weapon systems FIBER OPTIC GUIDED MISSILES (EFOGM)

FIBER OPTIC GUIDED MISSILES (EFOGM)

Could be used to take a high value target in a convoy in today's environment. In SR4 2070 can be vertically launched and high speed.

Lessons learned from the development of the fiber optic guided missile

Interesting read too.

WMS

from the anime "Gunslinger Girl" there's the Frettela. supposed to be a part of the Italian government fighting terrorists they sometimes have been used for political ends. They are assassins who work in teams of two. A handler who is usually pretty good at combat himself and a 'shooter' A cyber zombie who looks like a child, usually a little girl of about 11 years old.

They are expert shots and hand to hand combat killers, usually just waiting for their handler to turn them loose.

In one particular game we played, by the 60's the CIA had been chopped down and mixed up to become the Central Intelligence Directorate. If I remember correctly they were run by a secretive cabal of nationalistic nutjobs called "the ring" or the "inner circle" or something.

What about the IRS? Some-one has to deal with tax revenue from the corporations, right? I imagine that either they've been so handicapped by extraterritoriality and the secretive black nature of the corps, or that it's only pissed them off and now they have their own crack strike teams, secret agents, and pissed off decker prodigies to get what's rightfully theirs.

The latter seems alot more fun. the door is kicked down and suddenly there is a myriad of laser sights pointed at your torso. A man in wrap-around shades, a trench coat and black gloves steps into your living room, pistol whips you with one hand and shoves a badge in your face with the other, "It's the Internal Revenue Service, bitch."

The IRS is listed as an intelligence agency in Runner Havens. They have their own Criminal Invesitgative Division, and by law all tax agents since Prohibition are legally allowed to carry firearms.

Wonder what happened to Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, pronounced "See-Sys"). Probably split up and rolled into the FBI and CIA when the UCAS was formed.

The general ruling on what happened with the union of the U.S. and Canada is that the U.S. government (all three branches) expanded and the Canadian government save for its "welfare state" disappeared.

So canadians didn't end up with the U.S healthcare system? That's not very dystopian.

I wonder that sopmewhere along the way they don't roll the FBI, NSA, CIA, ATF into one agency. They came close after 9/11 and they taliban don't have mages!


geeks with guns, great.

Hey, careful, some of those "Geeks" later left to become Shadowrunners "Because it was safer". The Chrome Accountant being one of the main ones!

Back in the 90s, I created the "Corporate Court Trouble Consultants" for my very first campaign. They were agents that mainly dealt with terrorists and other threats to the (business) world (which the CC's seated AAAs considered mainly to consist of themselves), sometimes lesser corps.

I used Adam Warren's cyberpunky-take on the WWWA Trouble Consultants as examples, adapted to Shadowrun.

There's a comic about the IRS which should give some inspiration for those who use it in their games.

Her comment fits SR and RL.

The german police groups SWAT-like units and white-collar-crime-investigation in the same departments, but I think our tax collectors are unarmed.

Remember, people, that the IRS took down Capone. You don't mess with those motherfraggers.

Yeah, but what have they done for us lately?

Technically it was the Treasury Department's IRS and the Justice Department's (now defunct) Bureau of Prohibition working in tandem. Few modern agencies handle EVERY aspect of major federal law-enforcement or intelligence gathering operations from start to finish. It's usually a collaborative effort.

Seeing as how most of Canada was ceded to the NAN and Quebec, I'd imagine the majority of CSIS' physical assets went with it. What remained probably dissolved. Everything I read hints heavily that the UCAS is more United States than Canada. Imagine yourself fat, living with a grotesque healthcare system and a redneck neighbor who watches NASCAR while polishing his shotgun and there you go.

I grew up in Northern Ontario.

Replace "Shotgun" with "Rifle", and I don't have to imagine it.

Fat is a good thing up here, however. Damn long, cold winters! Need that insulation to keep warm!

And then I moved to a place that's even colder than the arctic!

Rifles? I thought you all used harpoons.

You're the first Canadian I've heard make that statement. I met a Canuck couple while on vacation in Orlando and the woman in the pair was rather appalled by our girth-y American guts and lack of healthy eating options.

Rifles. We've had them for years now.

And there's "Fat" and there's "OMGWTFBBQ" that goes on in the US, and Canada as well...

It's why the CAS states seceded.


The same reason the Homeland Security Act didn't create an American equivalent to the British security service, and why the FBI is not part of DHS yet rermains the primary agency dealing with counterterrorism: politics.

It's the same reason why there are a half-dozen uniform law enforcement agencies patrolling Washington, D.C. Everyone wants their own cops, and no one wants to share.

Ah yes, politics...

Where adult people can go, "No! It's mine, you can't have any!" just like they did on the schoolground, and not be considered immature for it.

Well... I could add about "path dependency" and the "persistence" of institutions, but yep, it's all about politics and not sharing a particular power niche with other people...

Cheers

Max

Ok here is a list of current Intelligence agencies
List of intelligence agencies

WMS

Ha! I didn't know of any other than ASIO. It's funny that we know more intelligence agencies in other countries than our own.


Also, have we heard anything from FEMA in SR history? Ever since Deus Ex I like the idea of them being conspirators to take over the world.

The funny thing is I can think of several more - like the Defense security authority has a counter espionage function.