You mention about a terrorist "renting a Piper Cub" and crashing it into a target. Something like that happened in Charleston, SC some years ago. One of the men at the Navy base went through a emotional break-up with his girlfriend and it affected him tremendously. He was also a licensed pilot. So he rented a single engine plane, took it up several thousand feet, then did a full throttle swan dive into one of the giant above ground fuel tanks on the base. Fortunately, the only fatality was him. Charleston's mayor demanded that the Navy prevent this from ever occuring again. The Navy responded by creating some type of air defense team for the base. Several years ago this was the only Navy base in the country that had its "own air force".

I heard about this from my brother-in-law when I visited him several years ago when he was stationed there. I'm going to hit Google to see if I can track this down.