JET DEFENSE: WHAT’S THE HOLDUP?

Congressional crit­ics and out­side ana­lysts are tak­ing aim at the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to defend pas­sen­ger planes against shoulder-​​fired mis­siles.
On Monday, Dr. Charles McQueary, the department’s under­sec­re­tary for sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy, announced an “aggres­sive” two-​​year study to “deter­mine if in fact there is a viable and effec­tive tech­nol­ogy we could deploy to pro­tect com­mer­cial air­craft.“
Under McQueary’s plan, three defense con­tract­ing teams will have six months and $2 mil­lion each to put together road maps for adapt­ing mil­i­tary antimis­sile sys­tems to civil­ian jets. Then the depart­ment will decide whether to build and test a pro­to­type. That process could take up to a year and a half.
But that’s too few deci­sions in too much time, crit­ics con­tend. In a lit­tle more than a year, so-​​called MANPADS (short for man-​​portable air defense sys­tems) have been used to attack an Israeli jet over Kenya, a DHL cargo craft over Iraq, a U.S. Army Chinook heli­copter, and an Air Force C-​​17 trans­port plane. More than half a mil­lion of the weapons have been made since the mid-‘60s, and tens of thou­sands of them are unac­counted for. The military’s planes already have MANPADS coun­ter­mea­sures on board, argues Sen. Charles Schumer (D-​​New York). Why wait to put them on pas­sen­ger jets?
“Shoulder-​​fired mis­siles are prob­a­bly the great­est dan­ger com­mer­cial air­lin­ers face in today’s world. While I’m glad DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is finally mov­ing for­ward, it’s at much too slow a pace. We can’t afford to wait another two years to out­fit planes — it’s already been 14 months since the Kenya attacks,” Schumer said in a state­ment.
My Wired News arti­cle has details on the MANPADS debate.
THERE’S MORE: In September, the Bush Administration pledged $100 mil­lion towards jet defense — and $60 mil­lion is bud­geted this year towards these efforts. The month before, Northrop Grumman revealed a project to zap oncom­ing mis­siles with a chemical-​​powered laser.
AND MORE: In the Boston Globe, MIT’s Theodore Postol and Geoffrey Forden argue that “foil­ing air­craft attacks isn’t rocket sci­ence.” They point to a num­ber of rel­a­tively sim­ple tech­nolo­gies which could help pre­vent jet­liner hijack­ings.
“Multiple tiny video cam­eras could be placed through­out a plane’s pas­sen­ger com­part­ment to record ini­tial actions that might lead to a takeover,” they sug­gest. “Wireless video­cams could even be worn on the cloth­ing of flight atten­dants.“
AND MORE: On Thursday, an Air Mobility Command C-​​5 trans­port plane was hit by a mis­sile, wit­nesses say. Luckily, the craft made it back safely to Baghdad air­port. A Black Hawk helpi­copter, struck near Fallujah, was not so lucky. Nine sol­diers are dead.

January 8th, 2004 | Missiles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.