Posted on 11/28/2002 7:05:46 PM PST by Conservative independent
AIRLINES were urged last night to consider installing anti-missile defence systems after the terrorist attempt to bring down an Israeli plane in Kenya.
The FBI gave a warning six months ago that civilian aircraft could be targeted by al-Qaeda terrorists firing missiles from the ground. Airlines noted the warning but few took any action because installing a basic anti-missile system would cost £2 million per aircraft.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Foreign Minister, said: “Today, they’re firing the missiles at Israeli planes, tomorrow they’ll fire missiles at American planes, British planes, every country’s aircraft. Therefore, there can be no compromise with terror.”
The attack was launched from a vehicle parked about a mile from Mombasa airport.
Rafi Marek, the captain of the Arkia Boeing 757, said that he felt a slight bump shortly after take-off and saw two “white stripes” approaching the rear of the aircraft. They passed close by before disappearing.
Aircraft are most vulnerable to attack from shoulder-held missiles when they have just taken off or are coming in to land. The Sam-7, the missile fired yesterday, has a maximum range of three miles.
The Arkia jet was well within range and the passengers had a lucky escape. Of 42 shoulder-held missile attacks recorded around the world on civilian aircraft, 29 have hit the target.
In Sri Lanka, 100 soldiers travelling on civilian charter aircraft were killed in two attacks in 1995, and 52 people died when Afghan guerrillas shot down a Bakhtar Afghan Airlines aircraft in 1985.
Only El Al, Israel’s national airline, is believed to have installed missile defence systems. These systems sense an approaching missile and deploy a false signal, usually a flare, to divert it. Heat-seeking missiles, such as the Sam-7, are drawn to the flare and explode harmlessly beyond the plane.
Civilian airliners are harder to hit than military jets, despite being much larger, because they emit far less heat.
It was an attack on a US military jet at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia this year that prompted the FBI to issue its bulletin on the threat to civilian aircraft. It stated: “Given al-Qaeda’s demonstrated objective to target the US airline industry, its access to US and Russian-made Man-Portable Air Defence Systems (Manpads), and recent apparent targeting of US-led forces in Saudi Arabia, law enforcement agencies in the US should remain alert to the potential use of Manpads against US aircraft.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has also considered the feasibilty of equipping the US civilian fleet with missile protection, but it concluded in 1999 that: “Since there have been no confirmed incidents in the US it is difficult to convince aircraft manufacturers and airlines of the potential cost benefits of making their aircraft less susceptible and less vulnerable to Manpads through the implementation of warning systems.”
Philip Baum, the editor of Aviation Security International magazine, said that a £2 million defence system would add only 1.5 per cent to the £130 million cost of a new Boeing 747. “With every terrorist incident we tend to assume further attacks will be of a similar nature,” he said. “After September 11, all the focus went on suicide hijackers getting into the cockpits. The response was to fit reinforced cockpit doors.
“But the new threat could be coming from a different direction. We need to look not only at the intent of a terrorist organisation but what it is capable of doing in the future.”
David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International magazine, said that the aviation industry had been aware for decades that airliners were vulnerable to this kind of attack. “The question is why people haven’t done it more often.”
But he cautioned against calls for airlines to be forced to pay for expensive military protection systems. “There are many other safety systems queueing up to be installed on planes which would save many more lives,” he said.
A British Airways source said: “We would never say never to this type of equipment but our view at the moment is that it belongs in the realm of highly sophisticated military fighter planes.”
BA would have to spend half its £1.4 billion cash reserves to install the device on each of its 350 aircraft.
A Department for Transport source said: “Technically it is feasible to fit these devices, but it would be extremely expensive and would not protect against all types of missile. We believe the best protection is good intelligence and security around airport perimeters.”
Yeh. So did Bill. We know he wouldn't lie about anything. :-P
That's why vampires are always getting backed over in parking lots. People have rear view mirrors, but still can't see them.
Is it practical to have a helicopter gunship, e.g. the Apache, stationed at a particular sensitive site (the Pentagon) to intercept any attempt again by terrorists using commercial airplanes.
This topic came up in a recent discussion. I felt that with quick scrambling capability, on site stationing and air to air missiles that this would be a viable strategy.
The possibility of a missile attack is a major concern for commercial airlines operating abroad, especially in Asia and Africa, said Charlie LeBlanc, managing director of Air Security International Inc., a Houston-based aviation-security firm that does government consulting work.
In the United States, he said, an attack is more likely to be thwarted by law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The missiles that were fired Thursday at an airplane filled with Israeli tourists as it left Kenya's resort city of Mombasa are readily available on the international black market, military analysts said. They are relatively easy to use and are probably in the hands of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, one of the suspects in the attack.
Israeli officials said Friday that the Arkia Charter Co. jet carrying 271 people that was fired on was apparently spared by bad aim from an old, inaccurate weapon. But civilian aircraft owned by Israel's flagship carrier, El Al, have been equipped with heat flares that act as decoys for the heat-seeking weapons.
"This is going to cause an enormous shudder throughout the [U.S.] government," said Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
U.S. officials have worried for some time that terrorists might turn such heat-seeking shoulder-fired missiles against commercial jetliners.
"You need to be mindful of and concerned about the fact that these things are fairly small, and it is not difficult to smuggle them anywhere," said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.***
I'm not only doubting it, I'm calling it a blatant lie.
They are, after all recoil-less type weapons.
The Russians have indeed so fitted their 9K32M Strela [*Grail* or *SA-7 NATO designation] to their Mil Mi-24 Gorbach *Hind-E* helicopter, extending not the range, but the altitude and slant angle attack capabilities of the missiles, making them an effective antihelicopter weapon.
And Stinger has also been under development as an armament capability for the *Predator* drones, in addition to the Hellfire missiles they're already capable of remotely launching. So yes, it can be done, though there are likely better ways to go, and it's very unlikely that either a SA-2M or Stinger was the missile used to bring down Flight 800.
-archy-/-
Flares and commercial airports do not mix.
El Al aircraft and RR-129A/AL chaff dispensers do.
-archy-/-
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