Regardless of whether you think the airlines, the airport management companies, and the federal government are doing enough to protect passengers against on-board terrorist threats, there are still threats to a commercial airliner from the outside.
The Jeteye system would sit on the belly of the plane.
(Credit: BAE Systems)The planes are still vulnerable to, among other things, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, a danger that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking to alleviate. Late last week, defense and aerospace contractor BAE Systems said it had won a $29 million contract from the DHS to test a sensors-and-lasers system for air defense against missiles.
The multinational company plans to install its Jeteye aircraft missile defense systems on as many as three American Airlines planes to evaluate its compatibility with daily passenger airline operations. Jeteye uses sensors to pick up and track heat-seeking missiles heading toward the aircraft, and then fires a laser to disrupt a missile's infrared capabilities. BAE says the technology, already in use on military aircraft, is safe, easy to use, and compliant with FAA regulations.
If you've booked travel on American for later this year, don't worry that you'll be in harm's way from errant test missiles; the system won't be tried out on flights carrying passengers, according to an Associated Press story. The airline agreed to the tests--which could involve 1,000-plus flights involving Boeing 767-200 planes, a model typically used on flights between New York and Los Angeles or San Francisco--to get an understanding of the technology but actually opposes the use of antimissile systems on commercial planes, the AP reported.
According to the U.S. State Department, at least 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by shoulder-fired missiles, also known as MANPADS, in the last 30 or so years.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, is working on airplane-based laser weapons designed, someday, to hit either much larger ballistic missiles or, separately, ground targets.
(Credit:
Northrop Grumman )
The chances of your flight being hit by a shoulder-fired, laser-guided missile are good enough that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent more than $100 million looking into ways to prevent it.
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman just completed 6,000 hours of in-flight testing on its Guardian directed infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) system, all part of the DHS initiative to adapt existing military technology to protect commercial aircraft from attack by surface-to-air-missiles (SAM) similar to the U.S.-made Stinger.
The DIRCM system works by first detecting the attack, then directing an invisible, eye-safe laser to the homing/seeker device of the incoming missile, disrupting its guidance signals, which ultimately protects the aircraft, according to Northrop Grumman (video here).
Much of the testing has been conducted on FedEx MD-10 and MD-11 cargo jets, using a ground-based electronic missile surrogate to simulate the launch of a SAM at an aircraft during takeoff or landing. The Guardian performed as advertised by automatically detecting the simulated launch and mock missile, according to the company.
More than 40 commercial aircraft have been attacked by Man Portable Air Defense Systems (Manpads) since the 1970s, resulting in the loss of about 400 lives, according to the U.S. State Department.
In a report to Congress, DHS estimated the per-flight cost to be $65 more than it wants to spend, which is $300. That comes to about 70 cents per passenger on cross country flights.The unit itself cost around $1 million, but that's wholesale--orders of 1,000 or more please.
The industry has yet to get on board however. As one airline executive put it in an interview with Aviation Week, "Is this a prudent use of resources?" A plane could just as well be shot down by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) or a .50-caliber machine gun. "Shouldn't we be doing more to go after the archer rather than trying to catch the arrows?" Then again, this is an industry allegedly too cheap to give its passengers fresh air.
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