Hackers are winning their war against the U.S. airline industry. They've driven four airlines into bankruptcy in just the last month: Skybus Airlines, Aloha Airgroup, ATA Airlines, and now Frontier Airlines. Hackers are also deleting thousands of flights each week at airports across the country, leaving passengers stranded with no way to reach their destinations. The civilian flyboys simply cannot survive the devastating denial-of-service attacks that plague their networks.

These attacks are only taking place against U.S. airline carriers. You just don't hear about airlines going bankrupt in Europe or Asia. I wanted to know why, so I phoned a high-ranking Air Force officer who works at Cyberspace Command. He said the hackers will succeed in their quest to destroy the U.S. aerospace industry if we don't put them under the protection of Cyberspace Command by the start of the Christmas rush. To this end, Air Force officials are trying to convince Congress to temporarily nationalize the air carriers under emergency legislation so military cyber warriors can protect civilian airline networks.

"We're getting into a sticky situation with the Posse Comitatus Act," my colleague at Cyberspace Command said. "But this is a whole new type of warfare and it requires a whole new type of military to defeat it. The Air Force is the only service with this new type of military, and we've made it clear to Congress that they have to choose to save the Posse Comitatus Act or the civilian aerospace industry. They can't have both — the terrorists have already seen to that."