A ROW broke out last week over the likely cost of defending civil aircraft against attack by surface-to-air missiles. An influential think tank issued a report on 25 January that claimed fitting passenger planes with laser-based missile defences would be prohibitively expensive. But a major aerospace contractor hit back, saying the information is out of date.
In its report, the California-based RAND Corporation, a public policy analysis group, warned that fitting military laser technology on the US’s 6800 civilian jets would be far too costly, at around $1.6 million per plane. But aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, which is developing such a system for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says this is based on 2003 data and that it is still on track to meet the DHS’s target of $1 million per plane – comparable with installing seat-back video systems.
However, the poor reliability of such systems would dramatically inflate maintenance costs, claims James Chow, the RAND report’s lead author. Today’s military missile defence equipment fails about once every 800 flight hours. If that failure rate was mirrored during civil operations, Chow projects extra annual operating costs of $300,000 per plane, or $2 billion for all US jets. That’s half what the US spends on all its transport security. “We think that’s out of whack,” says Chow.
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“The poor reliability of the proposed defences would dramatically inflate costs”
Most shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles home in on hotspots on their targets. More than 700,000 of the missiles have been produced since the 1970s, and older models change hands on the black market for as little as $5000. Such missiles have so far shot down two commercial jets, and in November 2003 one damaged a cargo plane, which crash-landed safely in Baghdad (pictured).
The defence systems work by fooling the infrared sensors that guide the heat-seeking missiles. The simplest eject flares that burn hot enough to distract the rudimentary sensors of first-generation missiles, making the missile veer off course. But the sensors used on newer missiles look instead for specific infrared wavelengths in jet exhaust. These can’t be diverted by flares, but can be fooled by lasers of multiple infrared wavelengths, modulated to make the missile’s guidance system think the plane is headed elsewhere.
“We’re going to be within DHS guidelines,” says Northrop executive Jack Pledger. “And we are projecting we’ll achieve better reliability than today’s systems,” he adds.
Chow concedes that if Northrop and BAE Systems, which is developing a similar system for the DHS, can make them more reliable, “it could be prudent to install them on commercial jets”.
