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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."
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.
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
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.
I don't care what his personal beliefs are.
I do not live in USA, but if Ron Paul becomes president it will at least be an option in a few years. For now I will stay in Norway where politicians are sensible and work for the good of the people.
Why do I care at all?
If USA implements Real ID it can spread to other countries. If the dollar crashes it will cause worldwide economic chaos. If the US keeps building bases all over the world, terrorism will become a increasingly bigger threat to the western world. If Iran gets attacked by the US nobody knows what is going to happen. If US politician keeps ignoring their constitution, the world's biggest super power may soon be a police state.
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.
> 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.
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.
Since laser light is directional, a simple pin-hole shadow mask in front of a CCD would be enough to compute a satisfactory approach vector to keep the target within re-capture range.
Like many DHS and other agencies' schemes, they may initially look good on paper (particularly to the uninformed public) but are likely to be proven worthless money sinkholes practice since they rely on the premise that terrorists will be unable to adapt... much like the MPAA was banking on AACS, HDCP and BD+ never being broken. At best, I think this is a $40B money scheme to make the promoters' friends richer.
With credit to Pope Guilty of the SA forums: Ron Paul wants to define life as starting at conception, build a fence along the US-Mexico border, prevent the Supreme Court from hearing Establishment Clause cases or the right to privacy (which would bar atheists from holding office in Texas, prevent the striking down of antisodomy laws, prevent the government from spending any money to enforce its decisions, among many other things), pull out of the UN, end birthright citizenship, and abolish the Federal Reserve in order to put America back on the gold standard. He was also the sole vote against divesting US federal government investments in corporations doing business with the genocidal government of the Sudan. Oh, and he believes that the Left is waging a war on religion and Christmas, he's against gay marriage, is against the popular vote, wants the estate tax repealed, is STILL making racist remarks, and believes in New World Order conspiracy theories. He also said: "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be" and "Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action."
As this is the same system that's been used by the US military for years, and no other world armies we've faced have yet been able to adapt despite multi-billion dollar yearly defense budgets, what makes you think Al Qaeda's going to have better luck?
If defeating the system sounds so simple to you, perhaps you should pitch your idea to one of these foreign governments. Obviously, you've thought it through a lot more thoroughly than they have.
This is just wasted effort. It would be better to spend the 40 billion dollars on training security staff.
.50BMG in California because of it's usefulness to terrorists. Never mind that there haven't been many incidents worldwide of terrorists using it, much less in the USA/Europe. The only case I know of where it was used in a crime caused no fatalities - oh yeah, and it was the guy who built a tank out of his bulldozer. Not exactly a guy concerned with practicality. For the cost of a .50BMG rifle you can get a lot of explosives - which terrorists do have a history of using.
This strikes me much like many other proposals: There are many other fields that a $40 billion investment would save many more lives. Improving car crash standards a bit, for example.
It's like banning the
Yes, I'm performing risk analysis - I'm not saying that terrorists won't manage to shoot down a commercial aircraft with a manpad, but is it worth $40 BILLION to try to stop it? A full plane would average what, 300 people? Even if it saves a plane - that's $133 million per life saved. Makes health care look cheap.
Right now, going by history - 300 people X zero average incidents per year = 0 average dead per year.
I mean - this system isn't guaranteed to work, even if they do shoot a IR missile at the plane(and the odds are currently low that they will).
I think we need to step back and stop concentrating on air travel so much. I mean, the terrorists attack plenty of places other than airlines. That was, relatively speaking, a one time deal. We'd be better off spending the money protecting malls and schools.
I don't read AC A human right
I think you underestimate the sophistication of terrorists. Couple this with technical support from states like Iran and its not very hard to come up with a specialised weapon. Having said that it much easier to rely on other ways of taking down an aircraft (ie bomb inside), or just going after an altogether different and easier target. As the French know, if you build your walls too big then the Germans just go around them. Damn Germans.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
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
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.
So it's just a waste of money and it will only cause the below average Joe to feel a bit safer...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.