According to the affidavit in the case against Ferdaus, one of these F-86 models was delivered in August to a storage facility in Framingham, Massachusetts that he had rented under a false name to build his attack planes and maintain all his equipment.
Ferdaus was arrested Wednesday in Ashland, a small town just to the west of Boston "in connection with his plot to damage or destroy the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, using large remote controlled aircraft filled with C-4 plastic explosives," according to a press statement from the Massachusetts U.S. District Attorney's Office.
The idea of using model planes and similar devices in terror attacks is unusual but not unprecedented.
Christopher Paul, a Columbus Ohio resident pleaded guilty in 2008 to planning terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe. According to the indictment in that case, Paul conducted research from 2006 on a variety of remote-controlled models, including a boat and a 5-foot long helicopter. Paul was accused of joining al Qaeda in the early 1990s.
Ferdaus allegedly planned to fill three remote controlled aircraft -- which he referred to as "small drone airplanes" -- with explosives, launch them from the east Potomac park, and guide them by GPS into their targets.
In some ways, the idea echoes - albeit in primitive fashion - the growing use by the United States and other governments of unmanned drones for surveillance and missile strikes against terrorist targets. The use of drones has had a dramatic impact in the campaign against al Qaeda and other terror groups in Pakistan - and is now being expanded to the Horn of Africa.
Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in Lebanon, reportedly carried out an armed drone attack on an Israeli naval vessel during the 2006 Lebanon war. The Haaretz newspaper reported at the time that the ship was attacked by an explosives-laden drone, which would have been undetected by radar. Four Israeli sailors were killed.
