RAND Issues Report; Test Gets Underway With NWA; Missile Bought
In Nicaraguan Sting
By Senior ANN Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
The thorny question of whether, how and why commercial airlines
ought to be protected from man-portable air defense missiles has
been all over the news lately, and three particular developments
are making news.
In the first place, the RAND Corporation, the archetypal think
tank, has produced a study which concludes defending airlines
against missiles is a losing proposition -- it costs too much. But
Northrop Grumman and Northwest Airlines apparently don't agree -- a
new N-G antimissile system is under test on an NWA airframe.
Finally, events in Nicaragua, where renegade Army officers may be
trying to sell a secret stash of SA-7 Strela (NATO "Grail")
missiles to terrorists, underscore exactly why serious people are
thinking about this farfetched idea.
RAND and Missiles
"It is currently not
cost-effective to spend billions of dollars equipping America's
6,800 commercial airliners with systems to guard against attacks
from shoulder-fired missiles," the RAND corporation concluded in a
very widely reported study this week.
The numbers tell the tale. It would cost $11 billion to install
the systems, not including the $2.1 billion needed every year to
run them. These astronomical numbers mean next to nothing on their
own, so Rand suggested comparing them to today's transportation
security spending. Right now, all government spending on all
transportation security, not just air, adds up to $4.4 billion a
year.
“...[G]iven what we spend today, a large investment in
technology still unproven in commercial airlines doesn't appear
appropriate,” RAND's James Chow, author of the study,
said.
In addition, present military systems have significant problems.
One of the most intolerable, in the airline environment, is a
propensity for frequent false alarms.
That doesn't mean that RAND suggests ignoring the threat, only
that the think tank's people believe other approaches can better
address this risk. They suggest working harder to keep terrorists
from getting missiles, improving airports' perimeter security, and
enhancing the hit-survivability of airliners.
In addition, while sounding a cautionary note about today's
antimissile systems, RAND notes that improving technology may solve
the technical problems, and lower the costs. In time, the authors
write, "the investment could be justified... if anti-missile
systems are made more economical and reliable."
Northrop Grumman and NWA
According to multiple
media reports, a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 will be fitted with
a new Northrop Grumman anti-missile system this year. The
laser-based system, named "Guardian," is supposed to be cheaper
than competing systems, perhaps addressing some of RAND's
complaints.
The purpose of these initial flight tests are to ensure that the
system does not cause stability, control or other aerodynamic
problems. This testing will become part of the FAA certification
package for the Guardian system. Passengers will not be carried
during these tests.
Guardian is an offshoot of military Directed InfraRed
CounterMeasures (DIRCM) technology, and is based on a successful
Northrop Grumman military product, the AN/AAQ-24(V) Nemesis, which
is in production and in use by US and British air forces. The
peculiar blisters on the pictures we showed you recently of the
MC-130 crash in Iraq were from this system. The system is entirely
automatic and does not need any attention from the pilots or other
aircrew.
Northrop Grumman will also be working with FedEx to begin flight
tests on an MD-11 airframe sometime during 2005. The project is
largely funded through the Department of Homeland Security.
The Nicaraguan Connection?
An international group
of police busted a small group of would-be arms dealers this month
in Nicaragua. The issue suddenly got the undivided attention of
people in very high places when the weapon they provided as proof
of their bona fides was a live SA-7 Strela anti-aircraft weapon,
the one used to date in almost all terrorist attacks on airliners.
Taken into custody by the Nicaraguan police, the prospective death
merchants gave up their source -- a group of officers in the
Nicaraguan Army.
Around that time the Army inadvertently confirmed the suspect's
story -- sending a Colonel, possibly one of the conspirators, to
try to intimidate the police into giving up the weapon. This drama
unfolded to the public in a Washington Times story by the Times's
military reporter, Rowan Scarborough.
Some disturbing inferences can be drawn from the facts in the
Scarborough article. The SA-7's serial number is not on the list of
the declared weapons of the Nicaraguan armed forces. The weapon is
believed to have been sourced from clandestine stocks held by
officers who remain loyal to the Sandinista party and its Communist
ideals. When the Sandinistas were in power, they received enormous
quantities of arms of all kinds from Cuban and Russian sources.
These weapons were used to fight "Contra" guerillas and intimidate
the population at home, but were also re-exported to other lands
for use by revolutionary and terrorist groups.
That wheel may have come full circle. The peddlers of the
missile were expecting a payday in the order of hundreds of
thousands of dollars per missile. They thought they were dealing
with Colombian terrorists -- and mentioned that they were willing
to sell to Muslim terrorists as well. If they had any compunction
about dealing with terrorists, they didn't let on.
This particular SA-7 is now secured, but it is inevitable that
Washington will turn up the heat on Managua about getting these
renegade stocks accounted for and destroyed. Those whose job it is
to worry about such things are now losing sleep over whether the
missile that the police seized in Nicaragua was the first that
their three suspects tried to sell... or only the most recent.
Summary
The RAND report makes clear that a successful terrorist missile
attack would have enormous human and financial costs. It also
points out that denying terrorists the means will be an uphill
fight. About three quarters of a million MANPADS have been
manufactured, and according to RAND "many thousands of the weapons
are unaccounted for." As the Nicaraguan incident illustrates,
governments try to preserve the secrecy of their stocks of such
sophisticated arms, and weapons in government arsenals are not safe
from sale into the black market.
The best answer to this
threat is probably a series of concentric lines of defense around
commercial aircraft. First, aggressive operations to hunt and
neutralize the terrorists who have the motive to make such an
attack. Second, continued stings like the successful
Nicaraguan-American police operation. Missile buy-backs like the
ones that have been conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan are also
crucial, and more and better eyes on airport perimeters are
needed.
If there is an attack, there will be no stopping the hysteria
which will result in a demand for DIRCM on every plane. For that
reason alone, it's wise to continue DIRCM research and try to find
ways to bring the costs under control, so that a fleet-wide DIRCM
installation becomes a possibility, rather than a pipe dream.
Of course, if the entire fleet has countermeasures capability,
the terrorists will work overtime trying to find DIRCM's
vulnerabilities. Which brings us back to aggressive operations to
hunt down and neutralize the terrorists.