Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're some kind of insurgent who wants to take out sensitive targets. You're not a half-ass insurgent; you have a large cadre of intelligent, dedicated, skilled people working for you. The best way to hit any target is from a long way away, so you have your guys develop missiles.
The big problem you have is one of accuracy. You see, it's very difficult for a missile to know where it is, even if you give it accelerometers and a good idea of where it started from. But if you can mark your target, then it can home in on that mark, or beacon, and hit it accurately.
So you put a little radio transmitter in a van or a car and park it very close to your target, and that missile will hit it. Alternately, you have a laser in the van that projects a spot on the target, and the missile looks for that.
The US military does exactly that kind of thing with precision munitions. "Laser guided bombs", they call them. The laser target designator can be man-portable, so you can have a guy sneak into enemy territory, light up the target with a laser that's invisible to the naked eye, and the flyboys can drop a bomb on that target. But of course the target designator can be carried by the airplane dropping the bombs, too.
The RV may have just been there to act as a disposable target designator. I mean, it fits what we know. I just don't know if it's true. Certainly the story given to us by the FBI will have only glancing contact with the truth--I trust the FIB as far as I can piss a Greyhound AmeriCruiser--and so far this attack does not fit with any known terrorist or political groups.
And then there's this: why declare the area a no-fly zone with use of deadly force authorized? Let's face it: if you want to keep the newscopters away, the mere threat of the pilots losing their tickets is more than enough incentive. Nobody who flies for a living is going to violate a NOTAM declaring a certain airspace off-limits when his ticket is on the line. Why add that people violating it might be shot down? This reaction seems rather hyperbolic if the attack was carried out with a truck bomb. Sure, keep the newscopters away from an active investigation, but threatening to shoot them down? That's not a civilian thing, that's military. (And the FAA is a civilian agency, to boot.) Police forces do not have air-to-air armaments. Who wants to be allowed to shoot down airspace violators, and why?
On the other hand, it could easily be government overreaction.
All those links came from here, and that link came from Cold Fury.
Look: there's going to be an official narrative for this one, and the press is going to ignore any evidence that what happened was anything other than what the official narrative says it was. But on the face of it, given what we've been shown, this is not some lunatic doing something because he had a bad time and wanted to get revenge in a big way. The hit was too precise, and had too big of an effect, and when it comes to shit like this I do not believe in coincidences. Whoever is responsible for this wanted to hit a specific communications nexus, for some very specific reasons, and I am not going to believe any government agency saying it was just this one guy who had a beef with so-and-so. Crazy guys who want to go out in a blaze of glory go for a body count.
Besides that, consider this: the destruction affected communications in a hundred mile radius from the point of explosion. Was there something within that area which unknown malefactors wanted to be unable to call home for however long it took for the network to route around the damage? A big explosion in downtown Nashville would have a wonderful focusing effect; law enforcement apparatus at all levels would immediately look there, taking their eyes off other locations for a little bit.
So here we are. It hasn't even been 48 hours yet, and we're not going to know anything concrete before three days have elapsed at least. But as I said, I'm disinclined to believe the official explanation because the story that the FIB is preparing to tell us does not fit.
(Note: in several spots I accidentally inverted the letters for "Federal Bureau of Investigation". If I were to let a post go up with all my typing mistakes left intact, I don't know if you could read them. But in this case, "FIB" seems at least as accurate as "FBI"--given their history over the past five years or so--so I left 'em in.)