Defending America's Ailiners from Anti-Aircraft Missiles

Nearly five years after Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. civilian airliners remain vulnerable to being shot down by hand-held missiles while landing or taking off.

International terrorists are well aware of the possibility. In 2002, al-Qaida terrorists tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner at Nairobi International Airport but they failed.

Hand-held anti-aircraft missiles have been around for at least three and a half decades. The Egyptian army used them to devastating effect against the Israeli Air Force in the 1973 Arab-Israeli, or Yom Kippur War. The CIA supplied them with great effect to mujahedeen guerrillas fighting the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Some of those mujahedeen are now, like Osama bin laden, leading figures in the international Islamist terror movements.

"The risk of an attack is real. There are thousands of shoulder-fired missiles -- which weigh between 30 and 40 pounds and would fit in a golf bag -- on the black market worldwide," The Orlando Sentinel editorialized July 21.

The technologies to defend aircraft from such relatively short- range, ground-fired, handheld missiles have also been around for decades. But airliners are far more vulnerable targets than military fighter-bombers or heavily armored ground-support aircraft like the A-10. They are slower, far larger and less agile targets. Nevertheless, the technology of cheap, hand-held missiles is very straightforward and chaff or flares to confuse heat-seeking sensors are still believed to be among relatively effective counter-measures.

In 2003, Congress approved funding to develop a $100 million, five-year program to develop a system of defense against such missiles. Northrop Grumman has been working on a revolving turret for the underbelly of airliners that fires a laser beam whose heat emissions would cause heat-seeking missiles to go off course.

However, earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that the program -- like so many other programs to boost national security it administers -- is way behind schedule. The DHS said another year and a half might be necessary before the program became operational.

"As the Orlando Sentinel editorialized July 21, "Progress has been maddeningly slow on developing a system to protect U.S. commercial airliners from missile attacks by terrorists."

The paper noted that civilian airliners could not be given a "quick fix" by providing them with the same anti-aircraft missile defensive systems the U.S. Air Force uses on its planes. Because civilian airliners are in continuous use daily, the military systems would degrade far more quickly on them and they are not designed for such continuous use.

The government will begin testing anti-missile equipment on three airliners next month, a first step toward what could be the most expensive security upgrade ever ordered for the nation's aviation system.

But USA Today reported on July 18 that in August, the DHS will hold tests of laser systems developed by Northrop Grumman and BAE at the DHS systems engineering and development office.

Even when one of those systems finally proves robust enough to install on the 6,800 airliners operating in the United States, vast uncertainty remains over how much it would cost.

Northrop Grumman puts the figure at $6 billion. USA Today reported that congressional critics charge it could be almost double that -- $11 billion. No one knows for sure but the track record of cost overruns on high-tech defense sector programs over the past six years suggests that the $11 billion figure is far more likely to be the realistic one and may even prove to be too low.

The delays in even getting this far reflect systematic problems in program implementation by the DHS in every area since it was created. But they also echo very specific problems that the U.S. Air Force has experienced across the broad spectrum of its ambitious space weapons programs and the massive headaches the U.S. Army is experiencing with its Future Combat System warfare integrated IT system -- current cost $160 billion and still soaring.

The U.S. domestic industrial base responds far more slowly in developing ambitious new high-tech programs than it did 40 or 50 years ago.

Developing anti-aircraft missile defenses suitable for civilian airliners, in fact, ought to be far easier than building the Airborne Laser or getting the ground-based midcourse interceptors deployed in Fort Greeley, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to work reliably.

Unlike those programs, the civilian airliner defense project does not require visionary leaps in creating unprecedented new systems utilizing pioneering technology. It only requires the incremental refining and strengthening of simple reliable technologies that have been in successful use for decades. It does not require pinpoint precision in hitting incoming targets at combined speeds of 10 to 15 times that of a speeding bullet, which ICBMs do. By contrast, man portable air defense system missiles, or MANPADs, can only fly at around mach 25 -- two and a half times the speed of sound, or 1,500 miles per bour, about the velocity of a speeding bullet. It only requires that incoming missiles be fooled and distracted, not that they be destroyed.

Yet even here, enormous delays of many years and huge cost over-runs appear to be structured into the process.

The stakes in developing anti-aircraft missile defenses for civilian airliners are much less than in building them for the entire nation against nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles that threaten the entire nation. Hundreds of lives at a time rather than multiple millions will be at stake if the wrong decisions are made. But those are still serious issues for a program which has yet to see any concrete results.

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