Copley News Service April 11, 2003
Debate grows over missile defense for airliners
By Toby Eckert
An unsuccessful missile attack on an Israeli airliner late last year was a warning shot heard loud and clear in the United States.
Debate is intensifying over whether to equip U.S. airliners with devices that can thwart such attacks by terrorists wielding shoulder-fired missiles.
Lawmakers and industry experts are squabbling over whether technology currently being used to protect military aircraft can be readily adapted for civilian use, raising questions about how quickly defensive systems could be installed.
Paying for the systems is another point of contention. The cost of equipping the existing civilian jet fleet has been estimated at $7 billion to $10 billion.
"Given the financial state of the airline industry at the moment, the likelihood of the airlines being able to fund that sort of technology is pretty slim," said Chris Yates, aviation security editor for Jane's, a defense information firm. "You would have to look at government funding yet again."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge recently told reporters, "At some point in time, we will have to have a national public policy decision as to whether or not public dollars should be expended for that purpose."
But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that was only "one item that is being looked at among many." Senate Republicans recently blocked a proposal by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to spend $30 million on research, development and initial deployment of an anti-missile system, saying the move was premature.
Experts expect the federal government to spend a good deal of time studying the issue before committing to any system.
"I do not necessarily assume that Tom Ridge is going to write them a check for $10 billion and call it a day," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense research group.
Numerous terrorist groups around the world, including al-Qaeda, are feared to have an arsenal of the type of lightweight, portable missile system that was used in the November 2002 attack against an Israeli Arkia airliner as it took off from an airport in Kenya.
That attack involved a Russian-made SA-7 missile system about five-feet long and weighing 30 pounds. The United States provided a similar weapon, the Stinger, to Afghan rebels fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s, and hundreds reportedly are unaccounted for.
The missiles can hit a plane at 10,000 feet and be fired from as far away as five miles. They take two to 10 seconds to hit their target.
James Loy, the head of the federal Transportation Security Administration, recently told the House aviation subcommittee that there had been 35 attempts to shoot down civilian aircraft with such weapons since 1978. The Kenya attack was the first outside of a war-torn area. Twenty-four of the attacks succeeded, mostly involving propeller-driven aircraft and resulting in more than 500 deaths. Of the six attacks on large, multiengine jets, five caused little or no damage, Loy said.
Defensive systems fall into a few broad categories, including decoy flares, powerful flash lamps and lasers. All are designed to thwart the missile's guidance system, which zeroes in on the heat from a plane's engine.
Many experts consider flares to be the least attractive option, since some newer missile systems have been designed to ignore them and they may pose a danger to the aircraft or ignite fires on the ground.
At a recent congressional hearing, Los Angeles-based defense contractor Northrop Grumman touted a system it designed for the military that uses an infrared laser beam. When the system's sensors detect a missile launch, they trigger a tracking system that targets the beam at the missile, interfering with its navigation and sending it off course.
The system, called Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures, or LAIRCM, "can be easily configured to protect commercial airliners," Northrop Grumman Vice President Robert DelBoca told the House aviation subcommittee in prepared testimony. "The bottom line is that LAIRCM is in production and will protect commercial aircraft."
But Pat Hurley, general manager of electronic warfare systems for Raytheon, a competing company, told the lawmakers: "There is no inexpensive, off-the-shelf, 100 percent effective, easy to install and socially acceptable solution. Not yet."
"Military systems exist, specifically designed for this problem, but their direct applicability to civil aircraft protection is problematic," Hurley said.
The same debate played out when Sen. Boxer tried to secure $30 million in a defense and homeland security spending bill to initiate an airline anti-missile program. Boxer is sponsoring legislation that would require commercial jets to have such systems, with installation starting at the end of this year.
"It is possible to do this. El Al is doing this," Boxer said, referring to the Israeli national airline.
There have been conflicting reports in the Israeli media about whether and how widely missile defenses are used on Israeli commercial aircraft. Israeli aerospace companies say they have developed such systems.
Boxer's spending amendment failed on a largely party-line vote, with most Republicans opposing it.
"Obviously, we need some time for the (Transportation Security Administration) to look at the threat and put (it) in the scale of the threats that we face in an order of priority, and second of all to come up then with the best way" to defend airliners, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Navy fighter pilot. "Now the best way may not be installing this equipment on airliners. It probably is. But we don't know for sure."
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who is cosponsoring Boxer's legislation, said money was the real issue.
"I'd just like to ask why are we waiting? There's only one reason, and that is that this administration almost has a knee-jerk reaction against spending money on homeland security," he said.
DelBoca said Northrop Grumman, in response to a government request, had developed a plan to install its technology on 300 commercial aircraft that fly internationally, for $2 million per plane. The cost could drop to about $1 million if the government decided to equip significantly more planes, he said.
Boxer's bill would have the federal government pick up the tab for equipping the existing commercial jet fleet, about 6,800 planes, with anti-missile systems.
But aviation industry experts said other costs also have to be considered, including taking planes out of service during installation and maintaining the systems.
"It's not just a matter of the government putting together a spending bill and saying, "Don't worry, we're paying for it.' Are they factoring in the downtime for the aircraft? The airlines will be concerned about that," said Charlie LeBlanc, vice president for operations at Air Security International, a Houston company.
The Air Transport Association, which represents the major airlines, issued a statement that said protecting planes against the missile threat "is the responsibility of our federal government. Therefore, any technology decisions in this regard will appropriately be made by government, not the airlines."
Industry sources said they were uncertain how long it might take to equip planes with such systems, but they expect it would be a lengthy process. DelBoca said installing his company's technology on 3,000 aircraft would take about six years to complete.
Testing and certification of defensive systems by the Federal Aviation Administration could lengthen any time line.
"It's going to take a while to do all of this," said Dan Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a public policy research organization in suburban Washington. "On the other hand, this threat isn't going away."
Copyright © 2003, Copley News Service
