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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."
...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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
The article says that the system being tested was developed by BAE which is a British company.
Hard to see how BAE could be very close to an Israeli defense company given that 1) the largest single contract BAE has outside NATO is to supply aircraft to Saudi Arabia and 2) the UK government imposed a partial embargo on sales of military equipment to Israel after Israel broke a previous undertaking not to use UK supplied arms in the occupied territories.
This is not about pork, that will come later on. Its about trying to create the illusion of safety and quite likely give a pump to the start wars boondoggle. Its a pretty idiotic idea regardless. The way to stop people shooting down planes is to hand out a slotting to anyone who does: an accountability approach.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well the pilots survived that crash landing... so that's something?
Actually this crash landing was pretty exceptional in that 50 people survived the 200mph crash landing. Many of those that died died after the crash from drowning[1], as they prematurely inflated their life jackets which made it impossible to get out of the plane as soon as the water level had risen above the level of the doors.
Your chances aren't great, since the year 2000, of 652 people involved in commercial jet emergency water landings, only 10 have survived[2].
I'd probably prefer to be blown up by a missile, but I couldn't say for sure until I've tried both.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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.
Actually Akabar more likely today to be equiped with an Iranian launcher paid for by Saudi money. Well, depending the launcher could be from various places such as Russia and China.
The cold war era missiles that are still around are unusable without refurbishing/maintenance that, at this point, is more expensive than buying a new missile.
I don't read AC A human right
Uh...I don't think you understand how these systems work. The missile *does* lock onto the laser source - by design. The sensor package then drives the seeker guidance unit to a different trajectory until the aircraft is no longer in the field of view of the seeker (in the process bleeding most of its energy as well). It is kind of like dragging a bull around by the ring through its nose.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Nearly all the links you posted in regards to Ron Paul are why people DO support him. Most of what he wants would result in SMALLER federal government, which is suppose to be what the conservative party stands for. Unfortunately we have reached the point where neither controlling party has any desire for small government at all, leaving the true conservatives with voting for the lesser of two evils (and we've seen how well this works, evil is still evil after all).
Ron Paul has always been very verbal in his pro-life anti-abortion stance, so of course he wants to define life as starting at conception, since abortion would then be murder. Building a fence between on the US-Mexico boarder has become a huge issue since many people do not want people coming across the boarder illegally taking up resources from the system but not paying back into them.
Preventing the Supreme Court from ruling on Establishment Clause is something the feds have no business doing and should be a state issue or even a local issue, not the feds issue. I'm an atheist and certainly do not think laws should be made to keep us out of office simply because we choose not to believe in a god, but on the same token, every inch you give the feds, they take a mile. The state should be left to decide things for themselves.
Our forefathers warned us about entangling alliances with foreign powers which is exactly what the U.N. is, an entangled alliance between foreign powers <URL:http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1400.htm> .
Ending birthright citizenship would cause absolutely no problems for Americans but would considerably hamper illegal immigrants from crossing the board to have a child simply because doing so would allow it to be an American citizen. Being born on our soil does not make you an American. Having American citizen parents raising you with American beliefs and values makes you an American citizen, the rest is just paperwork.
With regards to abolishing the IRS: The more you allow the federal government to do, the more they will do. By allowing them to levy taxes (and they sure as hell do levy a nice chunk of change by the way) allows them to fund all these little projects that do absolutely nothing for the people and everything for big business and their own little pet projects (See the article for a perfection example of wasted tax dollars on ideas that have no merit).
The government shouldn't be telling corporations how to interact with foreign governments unless it poses a risk to our country. Your example does not hurt us in the least. If the American people do not approve of companies actions, they can stop supporting the company any time they wish.
I will agree with you that him being against gay marriage is a mark against him. It really is none of the governments business who wants to marry who.
I'm not for the elector college either but then I think the way we vote is poorly setup and only stays around because the two parties in control don't want it to go away, as it benefits them and pushes out any potential third party which may actually bring some needed change.
The estate tax should be repealed. If you read your own link, how can you possibly be against small families passing on what they earned themselves to their own family. Why should the government get ANYTHING when someone dies? I just can't understand this and am glad he wants to get this repealed.
Regarding racist remarks, you link doesn't show any of that (maybe the page changed or something or I may not have seen it). The NWO conspiracy thing is nuts, I'll grant you that.
All and all he has 3 marks against him and everything else for him. Can you possibly say this about any other candidate running?
Brendan
P.S. Anti-missile tech does not belong on our commercial airplanes nor will they do anything. I can't recall the last time I heard about a commercial jet being shot out of the sky. This just reeks of government wasting money.
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.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Keep in mind that most of the missiles that would be fired at an aircraft were designed a long time ago. All but the newest generation do not have CCD sensors in them. The heat seeking missiles need to detect wavelengths in the mid to far IR wavelength range (4um to ~10um) or so, and none of the normal semiconductor stuff can see those wavelengths. Until relatively recently, the detectors were all cryogenically cooled single pixel or quadrant detectors. The seeker heads on those consist of a rotating head (inside a dome transparent to the wavelengths in question -- I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think they're sapphire usually,) on to which the detector is mounted on a bracket that can be swept over an angle between straight forward and some amount off axis. When the missile is in flight and the bracket is pointing straight forward, the missile is dead on, as the signal fades, it turns the bracket off to the side a bit to sweep a cone out in front of the missile. At some rotational angle, it gets the maximum signal, and so it knows to turn in that direction. The head spins at a few thousand RPMs. Those seeker heads are marvels of engineering if you ask me. And yes, many of the missiles do not store their cryogenic material internally -- for those that are fired from a plane, the LN2 or whatever is usually piped into the missile when it is armed, and it can only stay armed for so long before the cold stuff is gone and the missile will be unable to seek. Most of the ways of confusing such a missile involve identifying the missile type, and therefore the seeker head, and pulsing a laser at it out of phase with the signal from the hot parts of the target so that the missile spirals off in the wrong direction. So no, you can't defeat it with a pinhole. :)
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.
If one of your loved ones were on such a flight, would you still be so coldly analytical?
To a point. I practically score vulcan on personality tests(100% analytical).
Here's the problem with your point - the pie(governmental money, economy as a whole, take your pick) is only so large at any given point in time. Saying 'oh we can just spend $100 Billion instead' isn't a great answer to my point 'Statistical evidence shows that spending the money in this fashion is unlikely to save any lives, so it's better spent elsewhere'. I know the pie is larger than the $11B this proposed system could cost(assuming no overruns), that it's divided into thousands, even millions of pieces. I'm just arguing about the distribution of the pie.
Given that my family doesn't fly every day(I'm normally on planes more than they are), and that we've had a number of fatal mall and school shootings in the last five years, yet no fatal manpad missile strikes on commercial aircraft, I think that my family would be safer spending the money to help with creating a system to catch nuts before they go on a rampage than trying to defend against a thus-far almost non-existent and ineffectual threat.
I don't read AC A human right
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.