Posted on 11/20/2003 5:12:52 PM PST by tubavil
The Real Terrorist Missile Threat, and What Can be Done About It
By Robert Sherman
The past year has seen intense speculation on why early signs of the World Trade Center attack were not detected. Historians will forever dispute whether the FBI was negligent in failing to recognize that something consequential was in the offing as Arab students with poor flying skills asked to learn how to fly jumbo jets without learning how to take off or land.
But today the civilized world faces a threat many times more serious than 9-11. The evidence of the threat is not subtle or ambiguous. It sits right in front of us in plain sight.
Suppose that, within the space of one month, terrorists using shoulder-fired missiles shoot down two 747s and two regional passenger aircraft. Examination of such a scenario leads inexorably to six conclusions:
1. The socioeconomic cost would be immense.
2. Terrorist intent to use missiles against commercial aircraft is clear.
3. Weapons now widely dispersed around the world are capable of such an attack.
4. A variety of countermeasures can be implemented to significantly reduce the probability of a successful attack. While these countermeasures are not cheap, their cost is trivial compared to the cost of allowing terrorist counter-airliner attacks to succeed. Yet in most cases they are being pursued half-heartedly or not at all.
5. Major policy changes are imperative.
COST
One successful large-airliner shoot-down would be viewed as a freakish tragedy. But two successful attacks spread over a few days or weeks would be viewed as a pattern, an indicator of things to come. Statistically, one might argue that air travel remained safer than automobile travel regardless of whether there had been zero, one, two, or five successful attacks. But the psychological impact of serial shoot-downs would likely be extreme.
Immediately, the flying public would conclude that commercial aviation is unsafe.
Insurers would sharply increase their projections of the risk of commercial flight. Hull and liability insurance could become unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Passenger ticket sales could fall catastrophically because of fear and a sharp increase in ticket prices. Consider, for example, a world in which the cheapest coach seats are priced higher than today's unrestricted first-class seats.
The very survival of all air carriers, aircraft manufacturers, and their supporting industries would be endangered, as would those industries whose operations depend on air transportation. Civilization's ability to move people and goods rapidly over long distances could be lost.
Direct casualties from downing a handful of passenger jets would be in the hundreds, well under those of 9-11. But the socioeconomic cost would be far greater, deep in the hundreds of billions of dollars at least, depriving the world of rapid transportation, and probably triggering a worldwide recession or depression from which recovery cannot be predicted.
It is true that although the total number of civilians killed by terrorist use of shoulder-fired missiles against smaller aircraft to date approximates the passenger load of a large airliner, the socioeconomic impact of these attacks has been minimal. Similarly, many more people died in previous shipwrecks than in the sinking of the Titanic, but it was the latter that stimulated such obvious steps as requiring liners to carry enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers. The difference is psychological. Small numbers of large airliners carry a psychological and political salience that larger numbers of smaller aircraft do not. TERRORIST INTENT TO ATTACK AIRLINERS
Recent history finds ample evidence of accelerating terrorist attempts to attack passenger aircraft with shoulder-fired missiles. The most notable incidents include --
1994-A Falcon-50 executive jet carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi is shot down, igniting massive ethnic violence.
[Tubavil: 1996 TWA 800]
1997-Rebels shoot down a Yugoslav government transport, killing five.
1998-A Congo Airlines 727 airliner is shot down by rebels, killing all 40 aboard
1999-Rebels in Angola shoot down a United Nations C-130 transport, killing 14.
2001-Rebels in Angola hit, but fail to destroy, a United Nations 727 cargo aircraft.
2002-An expended surface-to-air missile launch tube is found near Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
2002-Two missiles are fired at an Israeli chartered 757 with 271 on board as it takes off from Mombasa, Kenya. The missiles are seen by the pilot as they fly by and miss.
2002-A young man openly carrying a fully functional late-model Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile is arrested on a street in St. Petersburg. He had found the missile on a shooting range and was taking it home to show his friends.
2003-At least two missiles are fired at US Air Force aircraft landing at Baghdad airport, but miss.
2003-Three arms dealers are arrested in a sting in New Jersey for attempting to sell the first of 200 Russian SA-18 missiles to an apparent Sudanese terrorist explicitly for use against American airliners. Fortunately apparent supplier of the missile was a Russian counter-terrorist agent, the missile was intentionally inoperable, the apparent Sudanese terrorist buyer was an FBI agent, and the arms dealers are now in custody and awaiting trial
The reporter is overstating aviation safety. While thousands die in car wrecks every year, the number of miles traveled by car is so huge that airliners are only about 5X-10X safer per mile. 5 crashes would bring aviation within spitting distance of cars for safety.
Plus, the demographic of air travelers is upmarket. Being opinion leaders, airliner crashes would have a magnified effect sconomically and psychologically.
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