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Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets
Hugh Pickens writes "As many as three American Airlines passenger jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology intended to protect planes from missile attacks. The tests, which could involve more than 1,000 flights, will determine how the technology holds up under the rigors of flight. The technology is intended to stop attacks by detecting heat from missiles, then responding in a fraction of a second by firing laser beams to jam the missiles' guidance systems. A Rand study in 2005 estimated it would cost about $11 billion to protect every US airliner from shoulder-fired missiles. Over 20 years, the cost to develop, procure and operate anti-missile systems could hit $40 billion."
40 billion, spread over how many aircraft, and paid for by how many hundreds of thousands of airline tickets and freight bills?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
...will the passengers on these airlines be told that SAMs will be launched at them in order to test the anti-missile defences?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
...does it include a fishtank with sharks?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
I've got all of these frikken lasers lying around ready to be mounted on the sharks swimming in my backyard pool and some %@#^$ contractor with government connections comes in and steals the show. My sharks + really big rubber bands + frikken lasers are going to be much cheaper than this "anti-missle" technology. This is just pork barrel politics rewarding people & companies with "comfortable" ideas. How about we think "outside the box" and start shooting laser-equipped sharks at these missles... I mean, seriously, they've already got fins which are aerodynamic and they could probably fly several hundred miles given a big enough rubber band gun.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
When has a commercial airliner been shot down by a missile? Or is this just someone trying to suck more money out of me when I fly again.
.
HUGE FUCKING OVERKILL?
This is why you Americans need Ron Paul...
By the way this will likely go through without a hitch.
If they had proposed testing on a plane-ful of bunnies, it'd be stopped faster than Hitler.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
A german police chief was asked on TV the day of the London bombings what extra measures should be taken. He said: "None. The measures are effective as they can be; we cannot avoid all terrorist attacks just as we cannot avoid all crime." I was impressed, He was a really intelligent man. A shame nobody bothered to inform the manufacturers and proponents of this system about this particular wisdom.
The real threat is someone standing at the end of a runway (on a building top or in a road) and firing an RPG. Didn't the IRA do that? Seems that RPGs would be easier to get then frickin' heat-seeking missiles.
This seems like overkill given the threat level. I'm willing to live with the risk of heat-seeking missiles shooting me down in mid-flight.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
This is the work of the Israeli lobby. The technology used is designed by and used on El-Al (the national Israeli airline). They've been heavily campaigning in the US for a contract. Quite frankly those $11 billion dollars belong somewhere else.
So if we legitimately have to shoot down an hijacked airliner as we should have in September 2001, we won't be able to shoot an AIM-9 at it, we'll have to get close enough in order to shoot it down with the fighter's gun?
Why test it on commercial jets when it'd be much more useful on military planes to say help with anti-missile countermeasures such as flares?
You just got troll'd!
Sharks with Laser Beams. For disrupting torpedos. Dr. Evil's going underwater with his next base, mark my words.
As others have pointed out, this is all rather silly since missile attacks do not constitute a large threat. Still, it should be easy to pressure the decision makers to adopt this technology. Imagine if you were to have vetoed this technology and a plane got shot down. Far easier to spend Joe Citizen''s money. After all, $11bn is only $30-odd per US citizen.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Number of passenger planes shot down by heat seeking missiles: 0
Number of passenger planes used as missiles: 3
So, err, don't you want the ability to shoot down passenger planes? Or is the next step to install "special" missiles on buildings that might have passenger planes flown into them in the future which can bypass the anti-missile system? And if that's the plan, what's to stop them bad guys (who are under every bed) from using those missiles to shoot down the planes?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why do all of you people detracting from this hate freedom? Do you want the terrorists to win?
Unless some defence contractor can make $40 billion out of this, the terrorists have already won.
You are a terrorist, then?
when someone leans across and says
what's that noise?
just say don't worry it's just uncle SAM
a cheaper way might be to paint clouds on the side of the aircraft for camouflage
or if it's a green laser they're using how about some luminous green paint
to be honest I'd think it would be slightly cheaper to try and avoid a situation where someone wants to fire missiles at you in the first place (usually it's a good idea)
across the world... then they won't feel the need to attack non military targets... oh never mind. Most probably won't get such a RADICAL idea.
Why are they using lasers? Run-of-the-mill shoulder-fired missiles are usually fooled by fire-cracker-like flares. Are they over-spending on this?
Table-ized A.I.
In other news, New Zealand equips all tractors with laser guided missiles to protect against terrorist sheep; and in Barbados the government combats terrorism by issuing tape recorders designed to look like coconuts to all citizens.
The truly insane keep doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result...
The official description may be that they are defensive, that they are only for jamming the guidance systems of enemy missiles, but they are weapons nonetheless. Once the public has swallowed the innocuous cover story, they can install much more capable systems on commercial aircraft. Any aircraft with weapons installed by the 'Defense" Department is military by nature, regardless of whether it carries civilian passengers. Those passengers will serve as human shields to cow others from shooting down these planes.
Any nation that allows US commercial aircraft into their airspace has suddenly agreed to letting the US military overfly their countries. Aircraft can be flown by remote control, including commercial aircraft with weapons. This is an extremely dangerous precedent. If another nation tried this, the US government would refuse them entry. Other nations are likely to respond the same way.
Think of it as closing the US borders by coercing other nations to do it for us.
"The use of a signal to mimic a missile attack has already been tested in the air, said Tim Wagner, an American Airlines spokesman." Yeah, right. So they're not going to test it with real missile, which doesn't give a lot of confidence that it will actually work.
Sounds like that "successful" antimissile test they did a year or so ago, where the missile was conveniently equipped with a GPS unit that continuously radioed its position to the antimissile system.
On the other hand, are they going to use signals to "mimic" things that are not missile attacks... like near-miss encounters with other passenger jets, for example?
"Burt Keirstead, director of BAE's commercial airline protection program, said BAE's contract requires it to prove that Jeteye will operate without failure for 3,000 hours of flight, and sets a goal of 4,500 hours."
What constitutes a failure? If it shoots at a Medivac helicopter and brings it down, did it succeed or fail?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Of the four confirmed firings, two planes were shot down, one was hit but landed safely, and another missed entirely.
That said, there are likely to be ways that $10 billion could be spent to save more lives. For instance, your chances of surviving a heart attack are better in a casino than in a hospital, because you're more likely to receive defibrillator treatment quickly in a casino. Would $10 billion spent there, or on making sure best practice for avoiding MRSA infections was adopted nationwide, be a better investment? Almost certainly. But people place a far higher value on avoiding spectacular deaths than mundane ones.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You may want to reconsider that statement, Iran Air Flight 655. But granted, it was not an American flight. But you did mention type. But I would consider any such defence good other than the cost. At the $$$ they are talking about, a $5000 flight each way to pay for it sounds pricey.
A shame nobody bothered to inform the manufacturers and proponents of this system about this particular wisdom.
I'm betting they're already well aware, they just don't care. It's awfully hard to sell multi-million dollar systems if no one thinks there is a reason for them.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
If another plane, building or other object emits heat, the airplane may shoot it down. Terrorists may use this against the plane. They could turn a laser protected plane into an offensive weapon. Not that they never tried that before... ;-)
I guess laser guided missiles will be popular among terrorists now :)
This is another example of using fear to loot our tax dollars and put them in the pockets of a chosen few greedy defense contractors.
If the US government really wanted to protect the flying public, then they would spend more on hiring air traffic controllers, and step up maintenance inspections.
How much per pound are they charging for this laser system. If any one would really look into the pricing of this, they would find it costs very little to develop and manufacture, and almost all the tax money we are spending for this is just sent directly into the pockets of fat cat contributors.
When will the American people wake up to being robbed by using fear?
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Parent AC is correct. The Israeli government has been sinking fortunes into this, and wants the US to help foot the bill (even more than the US is already footing the bill for Israel's security). If US airliners adapt this sort of technology on a large scale it will mean 1) AIPAC has been successful in their lobbying efforts; 2) the 'taxes and surcharges' portion of airline tickets will again increase to protect us ever more diligently from such dangers as water, toothpaste, spare batteries and dual-purpose terrorist tools like nail clippers or needlenose pliers; and 3) that the US as a culture has got their paranoia so screwed as to fear a random freak on a rooftop with an RPG (which has never happened in the US nor to a US airliner) more than they fear real US-style craziness like getting shot up at work or at the shops.
A shame nobody bothered to inform the manufacturers and proponents of this system about this particular wisdom.
Why would they care? The manufacturers want to sell stuff. The proponents want to look as if they're Doing Something. Neither group particularly gives a damn whether the system works or not.
all those other perfectly valid points aside - setting up those systems costs 11 billion (projected). but what does it cost the other side to get past them? if "they" can get one SAM, "they" will also be able to get three, practically for free in comparison to the cost of the defense systems. and high power laser systems, in contrast to what scifi movies try to make us believe, are rarely able to engage multiple targets in short succession. it's also not that far fetched to imagine a quickly rigged prototype guidance system that would not be influenced by laser blinding, also for a fraction of the cost of those billions.
the good new is that according to the article the airline running those tests seems to be also very sceptical of those systems.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
About as useful as having a lifejacket under your seat. A large commercial jet has never managed to make a water landing. If they are in a good enough state to consider that, then they can normally find some bit of land to crash the plane into. If not then you are dead already.
It is just about fear and using fear to control you. Look we protect you with these nonsense lasers. They can't even shoot missiles down with hug stationary lasers in heavily controlled tests, so they have no chance in real life on the butt of a commercial airliner, no chance.
My little Linux and tech blog
BAE Systems of Britain said yesterday that it won a $29 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security... BAE has received more than $100 million in funding for aircraft-protection systems.
Money moving from American government to British company, it seems to be working already.
My little Linux and tech blog
That won't prevent a company from creating a need to fill. If they do it right, they may even be eligible for government grants in their fight against the "terrorists".
In the meantime, they cut out all the funding for alternative energy funding in the last bill, so the USA can continue to be dependent on the oil tha sits under the homes and deserts of the people they want to defend their airliners against. Do we detect a pattern of utter stupidity here?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If they're going to go out for that, I'd hope they'd also include one of the whole-airplane parachutes people were talking about a few years ago. Seems to me like your typical accidental in-flight failure is much more common than a missile attack.
Tweet, tweet.
I have no opinion as to whether or not there was a cover up, but it is interesting to note that there were never any safety bulletins from the FAA as a result of their investigation.
> A shame nobody bothered to inform the manufacturers and proponents of this system about this particular wisdom.
You don't get people to pay you $11 billion by telling them that your product is a waste of time and money.
That said, I'm impressed that someone in law enforcement had the guts to be honest like that on TV. I wish we had some of them.
Not sure bout that. This incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 has not been cleared yet, and some radar tapes that could have been interesting have mysteriously disappeared, including those of an US carrier that was docked in the Naples port. And I have seen some impressive pictures of an Alitalia DC8 landing with a hole between the two left egines after being struck by an IR missile a few years earlier. Apparently the missile couldn't decide between the two engines and struck in the middle. Credit goes for the plane to hold together with both wing spars damaged and a fuel tank punched from side to side not catching fire.
Actually, I doubt that the simple jammer installed on an airliner would be able to defeat the seeker heads of a modern AIM-9 variant that easily. But presumably a fighter jet would first get close enough to the target to do a visual inspection, which would mean that it would be well within gun range. And besides that, most US fighters carry AIM-120 as well, which does not use IR for guidance or fusing, so would be reasonably effective.
The other side of the issue is that, of course, not all man-portable air defense missiles (MANPADs) are infrared guided, and a smart terrorist would respond to this measure by picking one that isn't. Stocks of Blowpipe have been found in Afghanistan -- It wasn't good enough to fight the Soviets, but would still be able to down an airliner.
Airliners are HUGE aircraft. Plus, they have redundant engines. Plus, the types of SAM systems we're probably worried about are shoulder launched since terrorists aren't going to be able to acquire or move larger systems. These smaller warheads probably can't take down an airliner under reasonable conditions. That all adds up to a waste of money to me.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Perhaps they're competing with Boeing....
Ask me about repetitive DNA
You would think that getting test missiles shot at them all the time would make passengers avoid that airline
But can they be attached to sharks?
Neither of the systems mentioned in subsequent research has ever been fielded in a combat environment.
Long and short of it: it is unproven.
Never mind the fact that there has never been an airliner downed by a MANPAD in the US.
Regardless, consumers will refuse to fund AA in this venture. If AA's costs rise, they will just fly on another airline.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Nanny-ocracy at its best.
Life is hazardous to your health.
Get over it. No amount of military funding will prevent terrorists and spending money for hardware to "protect" us is stupid. Put more money into killing them all and all their family members who believe this is a way to heaven.
My brother-in-law fell off a ladder yesterday and died. There are 22k people still alive with SCI, http://www.spinalcord.org/ - rather than waste this money on something for 400 people at a time, an airliner, take all that money and put it towards SCI instead. Or the pediatric brain tumor foundation http://www.pbtfus.org/ or the Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/ .
There is no protection from a suicide bomber.
- President Musharraf
It's almost as if the units were optimized to transfer money, rather than protect planes.
Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
True, but it's only a matter of time (or semantics). Look at what happened in Baghdad to a DHL A300: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident
It could have just have easily been carrying passengers (vice a cargo variant) elsewhere in the world, like an El Al flight out of Mombassa. Only because of the skill of the aircrew and a lot of luck were they able to land without hydraulics using differential thrust. And, had the flight gone on any longer, chances are the wing spar would have burned through resulting in a catastrophic crash. As it happens, the airframe is a total loss.
A perfect opportunity to build a laser-jammer tracking missile.
Why, as soon as the laser-jammer starts up, instead of tracking the now-lost IR signature, instead switch to a tracking system that uses that nice strong clear laser signal instead!
Wrong: A300 over Baghdad Aircraft survived to emergency landing, but a shoulder fired heat seeking missle has hit a commercial airliner before.
So..they make Antiaircraft laser technology avalilable and cheap so that expensive antiaircraft missiles are rendered obsolete.
And later on when terrorists build technology based on these lasers thenselves to hit aircraft, they will come out with what? A tachion-laser detector coupled to anti-light lasers in each commercial airplane?
-><- no
Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
Only through dumb luck.
Example 1.
Example 2. (Be sure to scroll down and read about the Israeli 757 that was fired upon in Kenya.)
Example 3. (Ok, not a passenger plane, but the terrorists apparently thought it was... and it is a common airliner.)
It's only a matter of time, and everybody knows it.
You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.
Only problem with this idea-- at any time there are hundreds of planes coming in to land from the West, as the sun is setting. It's unlikely any system is going to be able to detect the infrared signature of a small missile with the Sun as competition. All the bad guys have to do is have a little patience and wait til near sundown to make all these gadgets ineffective.
I've been reading /. for years, and this is the topic that made me get an account. What's my usernumber? Like 900,000,000?
OK,first off I work for the company that builds this thing. I was in fact, um, let me say heavily involved in designing several key components of the system and leave it at that.
This system is a variant of a system already flying on military aircraft in many places. It costs about $1M USD per aircraft (give or take some specifics for aircraft install) x an estimated 6000 commercial aircraft is $6B. The Rand corporation estimate is off by almost a factor of 2 and there's going to be some economies of scale involved in building 6000 of them that will drive the cost down considerably. Furthermore, I have no idea given the cost of spares, development, and lifecycle costs how they come to $40B over 20 years. My coworkers and I have been laughing about that number for more than 5 years.
The threat of these missiles is real. There have been attempts to smuggle them into the US in the past (http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030813-missile-plot01.htm) and while no commerical passenger aircraft have been shot down, that's not exactly for lack of trying (http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/021204-missile01.htm). The missiles are readily available on the black market, inexpensive, and anyone with 5 minutes training can use one.
All that said, and with my paycheck riding on it, I think there are better ways for the money to be spent. It would be an awful tragedy if an aircraft were shot down, but if you want to try and dollar cost average human lives, there are larger targets out there that would represent a greater loss of life that I think could be protected at a far lower cost, like trying to use a SAR system to keep bombs out of shopping malls or sports stadiums, or a tracking device to keep an eye on the whereabouts of LNG tanker trucks, a big explodey temptation for terrorists if there ever was one. 9-11 used aircraft, and I think we're kind of fixating a little too much.
When the hijacked plane gonna crash again to a government building, is that mean US government won't shoot it down?
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by a cruise missile from a US warship, this system is made to protect against cheap shoulder fired missiles/rockets. I don't know if it would be effective against the kind of missile that our warship used but I really doubt it.
Agreed, what for example London's excessive CCTV's and monitoring help against is rarely the crime, but more about catching the right guys when the deed is done. Of course, if the guys blow themselves up in the process, there's less use for those too. Catching criminals in a pre-crime fashion -- well, all they can do is to try monitor mobile traffic, but there are so many ways for a terrorist with the intention to do something big to avoid that (especially now that this is public knowledge that it's being done) that I'm not sure how efficient that is either.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Oops, I forgot a "for example" before the "mobile traffic" part. It's just that I think there are a bit too many sneaky ways around those to avoid monitored technology that in the end, good relations with other countries are the most efficient long term methods.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by a cruise missile from a US warship"
No it was shot down with a Standard Missile. The Standard is a surface to air missile. A cruise missile is an air plane like missile much like a drone and is typicaly used to attack land targets and or ships.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
exactly how many commercial jets have *ever* been attacked by missiles?? and who is going to pay for the $40 billion i wonder.
"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - G.K. Chesterton
According to the article discussing the RAND study, the system is designed to thwart shoulder launched SAM and Manpad attacks.
I don't think anything on earth could stop a missile sent to you courtesy of a US warship.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
As noted above, these lasers are designed to defeat IR missiles, not radar guided missiles.
The range of an AMRAAM is 45 miles and, presumably, would also work considerably closer as well. This laser lacks the power to melt the missile, so the commonly deployed AMRAAM will work just fine, as would any of a host of radar-guided SAMs.
The next idea will be a method to deal with all those terrorists with laser pointers who shine them at aircraft - just have the plane fire a missile at them! Remember, if you don't do it, the terrorists win.
This isn't news. Commercial airliners have had countermeasures on them for the past decade. This is an UPGRADE.
The day someone can sit on American soil next to an airport and fire a shoulder-rocket at an aircraft is the day I leave this country, as security theatre has become so much of a joke inside that the outside is left absolutely vulnerable.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Since it is primarily the Arabs who are telling the world that their God have given them permission to shoot down commercial airliners, wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to just not give or sell anti-aircraft missiles to the Arabs? You don't hear the Dutch, the Peruvians, or the Mongolians talk about how they are going to heaven by killing Americans, only Arabs. It would be cheaper to just not give missiles to Arabs.
But the whole point is not to save money or lives, the whole point is make sure that the 40 billion dollars is going to your company to make technology to protect against what is currently a non-existent threat. (If the threat were real, then the Arabs would be shooting down planes with the Stingers that the Americans gave them twenty years ago).
The only real threat is the possibility that the 40 billion dollars would be spent on health care, education, housing cost, or tax relief, And not be directed to your company and your golden parachute. Then when the money has gone to your company to make anti-missile technology, then actual missile will be distributed to the Arabs where they will make their way to the terrorist groups who will shoot one off occasionally at an airplane.
When you understand that the whole point of the war on terror is ensure an endless stream public monies go to huge expensive war technology contracts instead of other public needs, then you understand the entire point of the permanent endless war on terror.
Just don't buy any of that cheap foreclosed pennies-on-a-dollar real estate that is right next to the airport!
Friends like the United States. Remember that it was the United States that gave the Taliban the high teck wepons used against the Soviets in Afganistan.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Very interesting article. Just to nitpick, though, this is from the Wikipedia page you linked to: The Airbus was repaired and offered for sale in 2005.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
ot a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
Very true. Not yet, anyway.
And not for lack of trying. I'll leave it to the reader to look up attempts at this.
Sure, lets never bother to prepare for anything just because it has never happened before. Because, after all, the bad bad men would never think of anything that hasn't been tried before either...
I think USA has been the biggest perpetrator of missile shot jets in recent history, namely having shot down those Iranian passenger planes... Whereas I fail to recall any incidents of US airplanes being shot down by missiles.
If this isn't pork barrel, gravy train insanity I don't know what is. How many airliners have been shot down by shoulder mounted missiles?
How is a laser going to stop a completely mechanical device anyway?
Nuclear proliferation is a real concern. How much more so MANPAD proliferation? They're easier to design, build, operate, and transport.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I work for the company that builds it. I'll even go so far as to say that I had a hand in the design of several key systems and leave it at that. Point 1: The system proposed here is a variant of a system that is mounted on many military aircraft. It uses a laser to inject false tracking information into IR guided missiles. These missiles do not, for the most part, use focal plane arrays or any other similar technology. They have one pixel, and they use spatial modulation to generate corrective track and guidance information. The jamming laser cannot blind other pilots, shoot down other aircraft, or be used by the missile to generate valid track information (a concept we call home on jam). These systems are tested through many progressive levels using pieces of and then finally entire shoulder fired missile systems - real missiles, right out of the tube, with mass equivalents inserted in place of the warhead package. We shot real missiles at these systems dozens of times, and they work really, really well. Point 2: The shoulder fired threat is real. There have been attempts to smuggle missiles into this country, as well as shoot down commercial aircraft (in Kenya, not in the US). They are cheap, readily available on the black market, and any yahoo with five minutes training can use one. Point 3: Given both of the above, and with my paycheck riding on it, I still think it's a poor use of money. If you want to dollar cost average lives, I think there are other targets which have a greater possiblity for loss of life that can be protected for less money. What about using a SAR to try and keep pipe bombs out of malls or schools? What about a tracking system to keep an eye on LNG tanker trucks, a big mobile explodely temptation to terrorists if I ever saw one. 9-11 involved aircraft, but beyond that I think we're fixating a little too much.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
Only if it does not cost the airline industry too much money. Like using nitrogen to stop empty fuel tanks from exploding and requiring flight deck doors to be strong and locked.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
RTFA:
American [Airlines] said it opposes putting anti-missile systems on commercial planes but agreed to the tests to understand technology that might become available.
I was hoping they'd go with the flare dispenser countermeasures. These would look so cool landing at the local airport every time they got a false alarm.
Have gnu, will travel.
Some dumb ass on Slashdot to think he's smarter than the thousands of scientists and engineers employed by defense industry.
The funny thing about these examples is that you could kill more people by just walking into any major airport with a bomb before security and kill and hurt way more than anyone standing in a bush outside a runway.
Outside of that, none of your examples are actually on US soil. Remember that America is at war and thus attacks made in Iraq are not acts of Terrorism.
[J]
Since the airplane laser is there to "jam" the missiles' optical/IR tracking instead of destroying them, it should certainly be possible to redesign the missiles' guidance system to use the airplane's anti-missile jamming laser as a homing beacon, turning the defense mechanism into a practical bull's eye target.
...
:-)
Which explains why they are researching some new solution rather than use the military's current solution(s). If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems.
Like many DHS and other agencies' schemes, they may initially look good on paper (particularly to the uninformed public)
We are also both part of the uninformed public, our slashdot theories are worth even less than DHS papers.
And while you are right that not a single passenger jet has been downed, sholder fired IR missiles have been used to attack cargo planes in Iraq and on at least one occasion an Israeli passenger aircraft in Africa.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Knowing that future airliners might possess this technology, what's to stop a terrorist from adding a counter-counter measure to their missle?
So lasers will confuse the guidance system of the missle in mid-flight? Add a little code that says if the guidance system is confused switch to a "aim towards the big loud thing" mode.
Or a secondary pre-determined target, perhaps, that's on the ground.
Or just expode instantly and send tiny metal balls of fury in all directions, a la the bombs in Swordfish.
I'm not a military genius or anything, this sure does sound like a big waste of money. The cash could be spent on so many other things that could be guaranteed to save lives, reduce dependance on oil, research a disease, or provide free porn to everyone.
-David
I think you could go so far as to say paying $20 billion to stop just one potential source of attack on commercial airliners is a bit of terrorism to the taxpayers.
That 20 billion could be better spent. Take for instance the war in Iraq...might this take away from the $200 billion we spend there?
So this new anti-missile technology is going to be added to all their aircraft, including obsolete models like the MD-83 and 757 that got fired on? Nope, as with their winglets and Wifi upgrades, they're only doing this on a couple of their newer 767's.
The fact that terrorists have failed to shoot down 20-year-old civilian aircraft a few times obviously means only their newer, more expensive planes are actually at risk, I guess. Wouldn't want to lose all the money they spent on those cool winglets!
You're absolutely right. The fact that the FAA doesn't seem to care about this is kind of a big giveaway. Lasers in pilots' eyes? FAA to the rescue! Missiles fired at airliners? Meh.
For those who didn't RTFA, this is not the FAA, but rather the DHS, who have a long history of Security Theatre. These are the same geniuses who prohibit you from carrying more than 3 ounces of water on a flight. They'd do better to get Chuck Norris to ride along.
There have been several incidents where commercial airliners have been shot down. Nearly all were downed by official military. The fact that there have been so few attests to the professionalism of the various militaries.
In the late 1960's, Israel shot down a Jordanian airliner. In the early 1980's, an Iranian airliner was shot down by an American missile. The American destroyer was off-shore an Iranian city (Abidan, I believe) and was being attacked at the time by several Iranian PT boats. The US destroyer's captain ordered a missile launch against the PT boats, but the missile locked onto a commercial airliner that was on its final approach and blew it up. This incident scared the shit out everyone and caused major revisions in technology and tactics. The Iranians never attacked American warships with PT boats; the Americans didn't park warships so close to the Iranian shore; and an extensive rewriting of the software on the AGEIS ? system was done to prevent a reoccurence of this accident. It hasn't happened since.
In the mid-1980's a Korean 747 was shot down by the Soviets after flying near a secret Soviet airbase in Siberia. All the questions were never answered, but it has never happened again.
In 1987, Islamic terrorists working with Libya blew up a British Airways 747 over Scotland.
In 2000, the Islamic terrorist group, al-Qaida, attempted to blow up between six and twelve commercial airliners flying across the Pacific at the same time. This plot was discovered at the last minute. In 2001, the same group hijacked four airliners at the same time and crashed them into buildings, killing thousands of people in the USA. A year later, a passenger attempted to blow up a jet mid-flight with explosives packed in his shoes. He was subdued while attempting to get the fuse lit. A few years after that, Islamic terrorists based in the UK attempted to cause explosions on several airliners by mixing ordinary household liquids into explosive combinations while the plane's were in flight. This plot was foiled by inspectors who noticed several passengers attempting to board the aircraft while carrying unusually large amounts of legal but curious household chemicals. An example would be swimming pool chlorine mixed with automobile engine degreaser. These two chemicals ignite into a very hot flame when mixed, which occasionally burns up a suburbanite's car on their way home from CostCo.
The most noticeable facet about commercial airliners being shot down by air forces or terrorists is how rarely it happens. Airlines fly constantly in and around militarily hot areas. But airlines and the international air organizations work constantly to make sure airliners stick to established routes and have active ID transponders. Plus, they've made it quite clear to all the third-world dictators and would-be dictators still fighting in the jungle that their own 747 (flying as the trophy airship of the countrie's national airline) would be totally unwelcome at London, Paris, or Zurich airport if they took a notion to fucking around with commercial airliners. That keeps everyone on the straight and narrow.
Do not fly AA during in-flight testing of these devices.
Note to GA (General Aviators): Ask for hazard pay, apparently you are flying military targets.
On a side note, do we really need to invest this amount of capital to mitigate a threat which has proved to have no impact on America? Have the terrorists won by forcing us to revamp our culture- forcing us to live in fear of minor threats and over-regulate the aviation industry? I've fallen of the earth lately, but I do realize that not many conventional missile launches have been performed against domestic US flights... I see no tangible gain to this.
On 9/10, you could have said that about hijackers flying a plane into a building and killing 3000 people. What would be your point?
Sure, let's bother to prepare for every single possible thing that could happen, to the point where we're paying about 75% of our salaries in taxes that go to paying for these "protections", and a plane ticket costs 10x what it costs now because of all these "protections". And then watch as terrorists hit us in some other heretofore unseen way...
Why waste billions on the symptoms when we should be working on a cure to the heart of the matter?
I mean, how do you test an new anti-missile system on a plane?
RR
Smaller transport aircraft have been downed in Iraq (three C-130s), and a civilian DHL transport was hit but not destroyed.
Pod-mounted engines helped buy some time:
http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/DHL_SAM_attack1.aspx
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
How will this help against radar guided missiles?
what happens if the terrorist fires two or three or more missiles at the same time? From different angles and positions? what if they coat their missiles with a silvercoat too?
I believe these systems will be more expensive than not having them, my
rationale is when you take into the account the manufacture, installation
and continual upgrade and maintenance cycles and extra fuel required to carry
their mass, it would be far cheaper to just pay-out the $300,000 per wage-earning
victim, $150,000 per non-wage-earner (taking into account the continual
decline of the US dollar) every-time the unlikely event that a non-sovereign
entity attempts to fire a SAM at a US civilian aircraft.
Heck it might even act as some kind of macabre incentive for people to fly more...
this is actually just the latest wii-mote hack
Am I the only one whose first thought after reading this (it was all over the news and the Web two days ago) was basically, "Gee, that's so nice that they're announcing what type of airplanes and routes this will be used on, so even if the FAA doesn't plan an official test, I'm sure there are plenty of skeevy characters out there who would be more than happy to conduct unofficial testing without telling anyone ahead of time"?
American, BAE, and the FAA had all better be about 100% confident that this system works exactly as intended 100% of the time, because I can just about guarantee that some idiot is going to try to test this system with a live missile whether the FAA intends to or not.
I don't think for a second that there are terrorists hiding behind every tree, but I have a healthy respect for redneck ingenuity and know there are a LOT of people in this country who would view this announcement as a "challenge". Why tempt fate?
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Why spend $11 billion to stop a threat that is basically non-existent? Those incidents you pointed out happened in insecure areas, and even then they didn't succeed. The threat to American passenger planes in the US (and really 99% of everywhere else) is so small you probably can't even measure it. This is a boondoggle that will do nothing other than take tax money and put it into the hands of defense contractors. That money could be put towards something far more productive than this, and something that could save far more lives.
Ultimate safety is not possible, and it's not even desirable (IMHO of course). If we spent this much money on protecting every conceivable way for terrorists to attack us, we would go bankrupt. Preventative action is only possible to a certain extent. Take care of the low-hanging fruit, then let the rest of it be handled by law enforcement.
They attack us with box cutters, we respond with anti-homing-missile lasers. Just imagine if one of the terrorist had a gun. Mini-nukes on every passenger flight, I say!
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I'm still not sure how I feel about the CCTV system. The fact is that just about every convenience and grocery store in the planet has them. It's not like we're not already being watched as it is.
Putting cameras in public, high-risk, and high-crime areas does kind of make a lot of sense, and I'm not all that sure that the privacy concerns are well-founded, considering that there's no practical way to actually *monitor* such a large system.
Perhaps a good compromise would be to require some sort of court-issued warrant or subpoena before law enforcement is actually allowed to view the tapes.
The widespread mobile monitoring scenario is far-fetched and unplausable, considering the massive amount of manpower that would be necessary for such a program to be effective. It makes me recall a scene from The Simpsons' Movie. The camera shows a vast, endless room of identically-dressed NSA workers listening to headsets, all of whom are on the verge of falling asleep. After a few seconds, one of them triumphantly stands up and shouts "I FOUND ONE! The government actually found someone we're looking for!"
All in all, the CCTV is a pretty useful tool for solving crimes, and the privacy implications don't seem all that horrible, especially given how unreliable eyewitness accounts tend to be. And yes, I'm typically a privacy advocate, although I don't think that public CCTV is a battle worth fighting, considering the other manners in which our rights are being infringed upon.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.
Actually, the FAA historically made a cost-benefit analysis before mandating anything, where cost is determined by how many people would be killed, and they have a $ figure for how much each death is worth; for some reasons, $30k is popping to mind, but I can't find a way to verify that claim.
They figure out a cost:potential-passengers-killed ratio when deciding whether or not to force airlines to do something. $20BN divided among even the number of people on an Airbus is far too high. Keep in mind that in the 1980's, the FAA seriously debated whether or not to mandate smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in aircraft. Yeah. You heard me right. Luckily, it was something like $30M saved vs. $10M spent...
The same calculations take place any time they think there's a part that might fail on a particular plane. If by their calculations the cost vs. lives saved ratio is too high, they don't do it.
Please help metamoderate.
if the same amount of money and effort was spent on making friends and fixing social problems at the root, rather than putting up more xenophobic barricades, what chance is there that the problems whoud dissolve? .. no, *really* tried.
has anyone gone and asked the perceived enemy what their big problem is? has anyone tried to find a way to make friends with these people?
[sigh]
we have moved from:
"all we are saying, is give peace a chance"
to:
"i've got the nightly news to get to know the enemy"
this is not progress of civilization. this is devolution. "are we not men? (we are devo)".
Who designed the missiles in the first place? Irony would say USA :)
I for one welcome our laser shootin', missile defendin', robotic overlords.
Seriously, how many airliners in the United States are at risk of shoulder fired missile attacks?
Most of the time, the airlines are at an altitude much too high for shoulder fired missiles to work. There aren't any planes at risk except for those that pass over hostile, foreign countries on approach or takeoff. How many of those flights are there?
Whether or not this system is necessary at all, it sure as hell isn't necessary for every single flight. It's nothing more than a defense contractor trying to make an assload of money by selling systems that aren't necessary.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Total number of US civilian airliners brought down by shoulder-fired missles: 0
Total cost to develop this program: $40 billion
I'm currently drafting a proposal to sell dragon repellent to US airlines. Unlike these anti-missle quacks, I'll even guarantee that no aircraft coated with my patented dragon repellent will ever be knocked out by dragons. Oh, and I'm willing to do it for a mere $10 billion, which is a steal.
Considering that at last estimate the USA was hemorrhaging about $50 billion every 2 weeks in Iraq - I'd say that's a bargain. Assuming the damn things even work. There is a real threat - there are enough Stinger and other shoulder mounted air-to-ground missile systems that have been sold and are no longer accounted for that the chances someone might decide to shoot down an airliner in a crowded metro area are non-zero.
I'd rather we spend money defensively - even if it is against an admittedly movie theater plot threat - instead of on boondoggles that really haven't improved security in the world. The money will be spent - make no mistake; might as well spend it on something other than fruitless aggression.
Three cheers and a phat military contract for everyone, but what's going to protect the planes from lasers. Come to think of it the lasers, aren't going to be able to stop very many bullets at once.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Hundreds of lives.
Hundreds.
Billions of dollars to save hundreds of lives.
Amazing.
Thanks for the humorous diversion. Can we get back to spending my money on something more productive, now?
Sincerely,
Taxpayer
Kid-proof tablet..
Partly right. As another poster pointed out, it was not a cruise missile, as they are used for attacking land targets. The Surface to Air Missile used was an Standard Missile 2, specifically the SM2-MR. This SAM is a Semi-Active Radar Homing (SARH) missile, similar to the Sparrow widely carried by fighter aircraft. SARH weapons work by following a radar signal from the launcher which "paints" the target. The missile sees the radar return from the aircraft and follows it in. The missiles are fairly effective but have the downside that they can only see their target as long as the launcher retains contact and the missile's seeker catches the reflection. Maneuverable targets can use break-away maneuvers which sometimes cause the launcher to lose contact.
The bit that is particularly relevant here is that SARH guidance systems do not seek heat at all and would not be confused by a laser heating their seeker, nor a flare for that matter. On the other hand, radar-guided missiles are larger than the simpler infrared systems and would be unlikely to be shoulder-launched.
It looks like Wikipedia has an entry on the Standard Missile. As always with Wikipedia, take it with a grain of salt.
What happens to the heavy, fast-movile missile full of explosives after the jamming system diverts it from the airplane over the heavily-populated area?
KeS
Bollocks, I've got more chance of being killed by killer African bee's in Australia than I do of dying in a terrorist attack. After all this US fear mongering I often forget it was a yank who said: "you have nothing to fear but fear itself". The leading cause of aircraft crashes is still pilot error, add that to mechanical failure and bad weather (I'm fairly certain that terrorists are not even in the top 10 causes of Air crashes) and my chances of dying due to terrorist intervention are 1 in 100 (probably a lot higher), on top of the 1 in 1,000,000 chance that I will be killed on an air plane. Money would be better spend on replacing every teaspoon in the US.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Prior to 911 the masses were not too concerned about commercial jets flying into buildings. Think proactive security.
The last planes were downed with box cutters from walmart. Show me the anti razor blade system. I think they called it TSA or something and it worked so very well. Can't wait to spend 40 billion more tax dollars on this crap.
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
... how about testing a new system to give psychotherapy to troubled soldiers when they come home from the war?
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
Answering even half of those comments would take pages, and it seems that quite a few represent fairly extreme positions on his supposedly extreme positions. However, a couple of quick ones:
The article explains very clearly why the college exists and why it would be a disaster if it were taken apart, particularly without putting something in its place to accomplish the same goals:
This argument is hostile to the Constitution, however, which expressly established the United States as a constitutionally limited republic and not a direct democracy. The Founding Fathers sought to protect certain fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of speech, against the changing whims of popular opinion. Similarly, they created the Electoral College to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The president was to be elected by the 50 states rather than the American people directly, to ensure that less populated states had a voice in national elections. This is why they blended Electoral College votes between U.S. House seats, which are based on population, and U.S. Senate seats, which are accorded equally to each state. The goal was to balance the inherent tension between majority will and majority tyranny. Those who wish to abolish the Electoral College because it's not purely democratic should also argue that less populated states like Rhode Island or Wyoming don't deserve two senators.
The point of a Republic is both to protect the populace from the individual and to protect the individual from the mob. Abuses from swinging too far in either direction are quite common. I live in the Mid-West. My needs are different from LA and New York city. I want my vote to count, too. Allowing different voices to be heard is an essential part of the process.
As for avoiding entangling alliances being so 1800's, read about World War I? The point of non-interventionism is to negotiate from a strong position and only intervene when necessary. This does not mean no treaties, no trade, no defense. It means just the opposite, but treaties should always be structured to protect sovereignty, not force you into precipitous action decided by foreign powers; that is one way wars start. And, obviously, unnecessary wars start easily when you are in the habit of starting them yourself.
Both of these principles go hand in hand and are a big part of what is supposed to make us different.
Is Dr. Paul perfect? Hell no. When I see someone perfect in power, I don't expect to have to worry about politics after that. He is a good bit better than many other choices, and is essentially honest, which is frightening for a politician. But, even if he did not exist, the basic principles make sense and are something worth striving for.
People seem to think that principles are passé and cynicism is the only true path. I don't know if that represents you or not, but it seems to be very common. Hogwash. I took an oath to defend the Constitution. I take it seriously.
It's called Thanatotherapy (a "one-session approach to brief psychotherapy"). I read a good study in the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. Highly effective and no recurrence rates; insurance usual covers the treatment.
In other news, New Zealand equips all tractors with laser guided missiles to protect against terrorist sheep; and in Barbados the government combats terrorism by issuing tape recorders designed to look like coconuts to all citizens.
The truly insane keep doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result...
When I was in the Pentagon, there was a simulation developed in another group where they were trying to model the effects of kangaroos scattering when frightened by helicopters. The scattering behavior can warn enemy units of the helicopter approach, so pilots needed to be trained to avoid them. The industrious contractors worked day and night to add kangaroos to the flight simulator. When finished, the first pilots tested the new simulator.
The helicopter cleared a hill and startled a group of kangaroos. The animals scattered just as the were supposed to. The problem is that some of them took cover and started shooting back with shoulder mounted Stinger missiles. It turns out that the contractors started developing the kangaroos from a basic infantry class, changed the graphics and modified the behavior, but there were still links to the old code. Old defensive behavior occasionally got triggered in the new models.
The upside was that the helicopter pilots learned to avoid the kangaroos.
As far as I can tell, the threat of this is zero. And in the world at large, I ask the same questions. How many times have a US commerial jet has been attacked by a shoulder-launched missle -- or any missle at all? Does the outlay of the cost justifies arming all US commercial jets with this silly technology?
Now, what is really going on here? I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theory nut, but my guess is that those lasers will be use for purposes other than stated. The "sales pitch" to the public, of course, is to "protect" them from a non-existent threat. But what's the real story here? Flying is and still remains by far the safest mode of travel, and I say that even if one plane per year were to be brought down by a missle or other means even over US soil, airplanes would still remain the safest way to travel, given the 41,000 annual deaths on our roadways per year.
Now, on the other hand, think of what those lasers could really be used for. If the laser is strong enough to scramble guidiance systems on missles, it's also strong enough to fry people and vechiles on the ground. I also question how the lasers would be controlled. Would they be under the control of the piolot? Or under remote control somehwere else? If under remote control, that opens up even more vunerabilities -- a rouge cracker to take over the system and fry people or cars or buildings on the ground -- or the government could claim such happened.
Meanwhile, you start an arms race. What's to stop a would-be terrorist from building a plane-zapping laser that will not only be as effective at bringing down the plane, but no defense would exist against?
It's rather easy to build a CO2 laser if you know how to work glass. Or you can just purchase an industrial laser from anywhere. Much easier to move around than missles, can be used any number of times before the laser system itself burns out, and there would not be much of a trace of what brought the plane down.
I predict that if the US government start arming planes with lasers, would-be terrorists will rise to the occasion and show how easy it will be to defeat such a system. Lasers mounted on commercial jets will have the opposite effect in making flying less safe, not more, while at the same time giving the government a very dangerous weapon it could choose to use against civilians or could be comprimised by crackers -- perhaps even cracker terrorists -- to do any number of things.
We must put an end to the outlandish scemes of the US military. Give them the chance and they'll come up with "reasons" why even baby strollers should be militarized!!!!!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
Hence the whole thing is probably "corporate welfare". Otherwise it would be more likely to be first provided to DHL planes flying in warzones...
You may want to reconsider that statement, Iran Air Flight 655.
The system in question is about man portable anti aircraft missiles. Anti aircraft missiles carried by warships are much more destructive and have considerably longer range. Also warships can easily fire multiple missiles at the same target.
Just putting bullets through fuselages and killing the occasional passenger would be enough to bring total chaos and massive economic harm to the USA.
This is why spending money on anti-missile systems is stupid - what Bruce Schneier calls "Movie Plot" security.
No sig today...
+5 Insightful absurdity
May I ask what makes you think whomever is able to coordinate ten simultaneous attacks would be unable to coordinate ten simultaneous attacks with two missiles each?
Seriously, a single laser is not going to help against somebody determined to take down one or multiple aircraft. It might help against that single uncoordinated fanatic who happened to get his hands onto an heat seeking missile, but that's about it.
Also, whenever this measure actually gets implemented, classic IR missiles could just become a thing of the past. There alredy are alternative approaches like radar-guided systems, scaling those down to a portable size and inventing new ways to target aircraft will happen.
It's amazing how many people on Slashdot will instantly confess they are not a laywer. However, rocket physics and advanced weapons systems? Sure... Everyone's got an opinion on that.
The handful of people who actually do know what they are talking about must be reading this thread and laughing their heads off.
All I know, is this sounds like another futile exercise in (TSA style) looking for the weapon rather than (Israeli style) the terrorist. The latter isn't as politically correct...
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Look up the meaning of "terrorism", and prove me wrong. I dare you.
True, but it's only a matter of time (or semantics). Look at what happened in Baghdad to a DHL A300: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident It could have just have easily been carrying passengers (vice a cargo variant) elsewhere in the world,
There arn't that many "passengers" who fly in warzones. Especially once you eliminate those who are legitimate military targets and the suicidally stupid.
On 9/10, you could have said that about hijackers flying a plane into a building and killing 3000 people. What would be your point?
Actually plenty of people had come up with the idea of using an airliner as an improvised cruise missile. The pilot of "The Lone Gunmen", even got the target and political fallout more or less correct.
Agreed, what for example London's excessive CCTV's and monitoring help against is rarely the crime, but more about catching the right guys when the deed is done. Of course, if the guys blow themselves up in the process, there's less use for those too.
Assuming that the system is actually working at the time. All too often faults appear with the cameras nearest to both "terrorists" and out of control police...
When I read here, everybody is against it. But just imagine there are children aboard. Please think of the children.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It would cost $11bn to fit them to every american airliner. BUT in reality only airframes bound for high rish destinations are likely to be fitted, particularly ones where the (lack of / inadequecy of) local security round the airport might give a MANPAD attack opportunity. Therefore it could reasonably be expected that the amount of tax dollars spend will be significantly lower than this quoted figure.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
I think had the attack occurred in Germany he may have been under a tad more political pressure to make some kind of empty gesture.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
and when some part of this system gets hacked what issues have we then. some noob thinking hes playing avideo game POOF.
they don't need to use real SAM's just one of these
SkyTag
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/tracker.shtml
n/t
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think making planes safer is a BAD idea, but I'd really like to see some money get put into NOT pissing other countries off, instead of JUST planning ways to stop an attack. The best way to not get shot at is to make friends with as many people as possible.
But the USA wouldn't know much about that, would it?
Wait, test?! Is American Airlines going to be shooting missiles at planes... because nobody else will.
Smaller transport aircraft have been downed in Iraq (three C-130s),
These are military aircraft. AFAIK there isn't a civil version of these aircraft.
FYI, there are some that have been converted to civilian use (firefighting in california).
"As many as three American Airlines passenger jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology intended to protect planes from missile attacks"
What Rand genious thought this one up. Sounds like yet another excuse by the Military Industrial Complex to spend yet more billions of your money. What good is a laser defense system against people who are prepared to destroy themselves as well as the airline armed with nothing more leathal than knives and mace spray.
These 'terror' alerts are designed to make us so scared that we'll let them take away even more of our freedoms. It's us they are really scared of. The best defence against not getting blown up by a missile is not to sell them one in the first place. I wonder who sold them the missile?
"I want everyone to remember, why they need us!"
Adam Sutler, Lord High Chancellor of Greater England
davecb5620@gmail.com
"I work for the company that builds it. I'll even go so far as to say that I had a hand in the design of several key systems and leave it at that"
..
For a country that denies medical care to its own citizins, to spend money on such a project is obsene. The real enemy is talking to you every night on Faux News
davecb5620@gmail.com
`If we save just one life it will have been worth it!'
Things that could be done with $51 billion:
Or, we could research a device that will probably never need to be used. Even if it was used, it's likely that saving a single plane wouldn't justify the cost...
Because it's totally Command & Conquer Generalstastic.
Ha.
Kid-proof tablet..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_of_Honor
(see the last paragraph)
One of many I'm sure
"If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems."
Nope, bzzzt...wrong. The weapon designers will consider any potentially successful defense, regardless of purpose, as a credible threat to the success of their product (i.e. the weapon) and they will most likely take steps or at least research how much it would cost to neutralize the new defense.
Researching a countermeasure is one thing, updating missiles in the field or deploying new missiles is something very different. Especially given that "flawed" design that would make the defense inapplicable to the military. The missile would be unarguably targeting civilian airliners.
History has shown time and again, regardless of circumstances, that weapons and armor (or more recently other types of defenses) are in a continual arms race (pun intended) against one another which leaves no potential advantage unexplored or method unemployed in the service of either attack or defense.
Wrong. Expanding rifle bullets is one example. The technology was outlawed by international convention and has remained in the domain of civilian hunting ammunition.
-- toolie
I've never actually priced components for my cruise missile, but I don't think you can cheap together an anti-aircraft missile from any of the usual sources. About an order-of-magnitude ahead of civilian tech. It'd be far cheaper to pose as a terrorist and score a proper unit from a rogue arms dealer.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
All you guys are missing the point here. It is not about countering this "defense" system. It is about disabling current offensive technology like these missiles. So, how do they know it will work? The people that make the "defense" make the missiles (or know people that make the missiles). They know what the shady groups have, so they know how to counter them.
The terrorists that target civilian aircraft DO NOT make their own missiles. They just buy them from the black market. Generally the cheap, old tech missiles and guns. That is, they do not have,
1. radar guided ground to air missiles
2. radar guided anti-aircraft guns
3. fly-by-wire missiles with ground radar stations
4. MiG-27 aircraft
etc.
My most recent flight (December) on an AA Boeing 757 included a collapsing seat back and toilets that overflowed. I'll be surprised if the anti-missile system doesn't fry something onboard before it performs any protective service. Of course, with my (unfortunately long) experience with problems on 757s, that might be a good outcome.
You say that since nothing could prevent attacks with 100% certainty, so no measures should be taken that can prevent 80% or 10% of causalities. Thats wrong. We have to learn from events, and improve system...
...for razzle dazzle!
You can also look at it as cost vs reward from the viewpoint of a terrorist. Using a $150 shoulder fired rocket, one can destroy an extraordinarily expensive piece of equipment and take 200+ lives. Were I out to cause mayhem, that would look like an attractive proposition to me.
Anti-terrorism provides whole new vistas for lucrative pork-barrel projects.
Chickenshits-- tell everyone to grow a backbone. America is ruled by cowards, motivated only by greed or fear. And I don't see that it's going to get any better as long as the majority of the populace continues to believe that their choice is between a Republican and a Democrat.
Cheap, shoulder-fired missiles use optical, IR tracking, or laser seeking (See RBS-70.) Even if the jamming systems on airliners handled all these perfectly, sensors using millimeter wave and other parts of the spectrum are getting cheaper. There's weapons like the British Blowpipe that won't be jammed by the proposed system.
Active optical/IR jamming systems will not enable home-on-jamming. The laser is pulsed. Google "angle pull-off"
Yeah, I can't believe people are seriously thinking of implementing this "solution". In the face of such nuttiness, I suppose defending tall buildings with AA missiles as a counter to highjacked jets is a logical next step. People, listen up: you cannot ever, ever be perfectly safe. All you can do is let the government frighten you into taking ever more control over your lives in the name of "security", and putting ever more tax dollars into the pockets of the "defense" industry to protect you from every conceivable hypothetical threat. Of course it's possible that somebody will shoot down an airliner with a shoulder-launched missile. How many other possible ways are there to do what amounts to the same thing? Will you pay to protect against every one of those other possibilities?
The U.S. has gone nuts over one successful terrorist attack. I remind you that the method employed was to hijack jet liners, and crash them into buildings, not to shoot them down. Furthermore, there is a simple and practical countermeasure to such tactics that has (I hope) been put into effect—armor the cockpit cabin door and keep it locked during flight. Yet, there has been a continual spate of "security measures" designed to make us "safe" in the skies—like banning one of the three states of matter (liquid), because someone realized you can make a bomb out of liquids. No one has ever explained to me satisfactorily why solids aren't banned for the same reason...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
What prevents some terrorists from planing a coordinated attack on, say, 5 major airports, and 2 airliners landing/taking off each within a 5 min window?
;)
Thus far, there have been a few attacks on aircraft - yet they've thus far been unsuccessful. A jetliner is a huge plane, and it doesn't hang around in the attackable range for very long. The multi-engine nature of jetliners tends to confuse missiles as well.
Remember, the missile systems we're talking about aren't small, or normally cheap in terrorist terms*. This makes them easier to intercept and difficult to deploy in large numbers.
You'd still have to save 133 planes get get the 'lives saved' numbers down below $1Million per life.
Generally speaking, I'd say today that a human life is worth ~1 Million. More or less, of course. For older people(especially), I'll start asking about quality of life - it does us no real good to spend a million extending a person's life by a year by having a tube stuck down their throat and hooked up to a dozen machines. I also tend to value criminals in the course of violent crime around $0 or less. Maybe -$20 or so, makes it worth it to plug them with some lead to increase their value.
Please note that I'd love to value human lives more, but as a matter of practicality, there are plenty of things we can do that'll save a human life for less than a million. Get some statistical analysis that says that something will save a human life for every $10k spent, I'd be like 'why aren't we spending it already?'. For $100k I'll be checking to see that it's not some inane life extension scheme that wouldn't have what I'd consider a decent quality of life**. Same deal with a million, but a lot more so. At that level we'd better be talking about saving lives, not merely extending them by a year or two.
Let's say that the missile threat was a quite real one and this system ended up saving lives at a 'cost' of $1million per life. Perhaps using a cheaper flare&chaff package system than a high-tech laser. I'd say it's worth it, as we're talking about the difference between a funeral and a safe flight to their destination. $1M to keep a cancer/heart/stroke victim alive for only an extra year - not really worth it(sadly enough). $1M to cure cancer in a 20 year old? Sold!
*They will occasionally get ahold of one cheap through alternate channels.
**IE you'd put down a dog before having it live like that.
I don't read AC A human right
Or better still just talk about it and get everybody to spend $50B on anti-missile systems. When they're done with that talk about using $10 worth of steel and an arc-welder to derail trains and we'll be spending $100B putting monitored cameras on every inch of rail in the country.
Then you could just spend $10 and blow up a bus while everybody is celebrating the invincible transportation system...
I highly doubt you could get a shoulder fired rocket in the vicinity of a US commercial airport for $150. Regardless, you've still got to consider the bang for your buck. $51 million to maybe save a plane in the unlikely event that somebody manages to obtain, transport and correctly deploy a weapon, or one of those other things I've listed. There are sensible amounts of money to divert to a problem, and then there is foolish.
Additionally, closing this "hole" for $51 billion will merely cause attackers to move to an easier target, or pick a technology that won't be blocked by this system. So really you spent $51B to change the threat, not to eliminate it. I'd rather have $51B in infrastructure.
New script for agent #007.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I highly doubt you could get a shoulder fired rocket in the vicinity of a US commercial airport for $150.
Why not? You can pretty much walk right up to the fences surrounding most airports I've seen. The Minneapolis/St. Paul airport has a freeway running along all four sides of it. You could pretty much pull over next to the end of a runway, whip out your missle launcher, jump into the ditch, and down a plane before anyone could do anything about it.
They are still transport aircraft (AC-130 gunship excepted), and civil versions (L-100, etc) have been in use for many years. C-130s are comparable in size and features to many other civil aircraft, so a MANPAD system that can bag them (BTW, 130s are tough airframes) can certainly take out other transports.
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?aircraftsearch=Lockheed%20L-100-30%20Hercules%20(L-382G)&distinct_entry=true
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Assume RAND is right, and it costs $41 billion to do this. What would the same amount of additional money spent on intel and special ops accomplish?
Actually, there was a letter in Aviation Week that suggested the cheapest method was for the U.S. to covertly flood the black arms market with older surplus missiles from various countries of manufacture that were rigged to explode on launch or just not function. The writer pointed out that it would be trivial to get a 10x effect, where the terrorist would have to assume 9 out of 10 times it would either not work or explode. This also method also has a social engineering aspect, because the distribution of the bgus arms is promoted and facilitated by everyone upstream in the supply chain - they got the money, after all, they don't care what the end result is for either terrorist or victim.
What kind of dolt believe terrorists are running around the USA with shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles? (Something only the US military is likely to have -- particularly within US soil.)
...)
Maybe that is a rhetorical question -- obviously the dolts who will be paying for this new and improved scam on the tax-paying public in the name of 'for your convenience and safety against terrorists'...
Let me ask you something -- shaking in your shoes Americans terrified of your own shadows -- have you not considered that if there actually WERE terrorists -- would they not have done SOMETHING between 9/11 and now?
Could they not have rented (or stolen) a truck and 20 feet of chain and yanked out a section of railways track to derail a train -- or SOMETHING??? (C'mon -- use your small brains and try to come up with some creative measures to wreak havock -- think of anything yet?
I currently live in Russia -- a place where trains ARE derailed, and where there ARE terrorists blowing stuff up -- but even a 100-year-old-babooshka in a village somewhere wouldn't be as much of a 'village idiot' as the Americans who are arming the entire country, and giving the government free reign to take away every conceivable element of privacy or security in 'the name' of 'safety' against all these boogiemen behind every 'bush'.
Follow the freakin money folks and use your freakin heads -- into who's pockets do all these billions flow???