Non-Subscriber Extract
Airlines await C-MANPADS report
By Ramon Lopez
18 June 2008
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has wrapped up a major portion of its Counter-MANPADS (man-portable air-defence systems [C-MANPADS]) programme designed to gauge the suitability of military infrared (IR) aircraft missile-defence systems for protecting United States commercial aircraft against shoulder-fired missiles.
BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman conducted live-fire tests of their countermeasure devices in late 2007 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Ground-based tests in October 2007 were also part of a third and final phase of the DHS assessment of Northrop Grumman's Guardian system.
BAE Systems is due to complete flight trials of its JETEYE system in March 2009. Some time afterwards the DHS will send the US Congress its final, overall report - possibly with recommendations - on the three-year, multimillion-dollar anti-missile system research and development programme involving the two companies. But DHS officials have never led the public to believe that a C-MANPADS deployment was ever a given and it remains to be seen whether US passenger aircraft will carry protection against heat-seeking missiles.
According to the US State Department, MANPADS pose a serious potential threat to passenger air travel, the commercial aviation industry, and military aircraft around the world. Since 1978, there have been 35 attacks worldwide on civilian aviation, resulting in the loss of 24 aircraft and more than 500 fatalities.
"While this technology has been used by the US military and some foreign commercial airlines, the challenges in adapting these technologies for use commercially in the US are significant," say DHS officials, who add that "there is no credible, specific intelligence information about planned MANPADS attacks against US commercial aircraft".
In the Fiscal Year 2007 Homeland Security appropriations bill, lawmakers set aside USD30 million to USD40 million to evaluate the feasibility of placing C-MANPADS technology on passenger aircraft.
Yet industry officials associated with the R&D efforts tell Jane's they are sceptical that the lengthy technology demonstrations will lead to widespread C-MANPADS installations. They argue that carriers were reluctant to support the concept from the start for fear that they would be forced to pay for the hardware and aircraft installations - and the situation today is no better, with airlines preoccupied with spirallng fuel bills. Officials believe US lawmakers will not mandate C-MANPADS installations unless a new serious terrorist plot against civil aviation is uncovered.
"It would be premature to say that US federal law will mandate the deployment of C-MANPADS devices in air carriers," says Austen Hall, a London-based partner at law firm Hogan & Hartson. "... it would be sheer speculation to attempt to project whether the [US] Congress will require the installation of such technology on civil aircraft or who would pay to purchase, install, and maintain it."
One airline group has endorsed the idea of placing missile defence systems on commercial aircraft used as troop transports. Thomas Zoeller, president and chief executive officer of the National Air Carrier Association (NACA), which represents charter airlines, says the handful of systems built for the DHS programme should be used to protect military charter flights serving Iraq and Afghanistan.