Homeland Security eyes military technology for commercial aircraft

The Homeland Security Department has selected three contractors to study whether military countermissile technology can be used to defend U.S. civilian aircraft from shoulder-fired missiles.

Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and United Airlines will each receive $2 million to develop a plan for using military technology to answer the threat that "man-portable air defense systems" (MANPADS) potentially pose to commercial airplanes. The contractors will explore how to migrate existing military technology to commercial aircraft, as opposed to developing new technology.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security officials emphasized the government has no credible evidence that shoulder-fired missiles will be used against commercial aircraft in the United States. However, they said the MANPADS program is intended to thwart any future attempts to shoot down a plane with missiles that are inexpensive, relatively simple to use, abundant on the black market and easy to conceal. According to DHS officials, even an unsuccessful attack on a commercial airliner would have a devastating economic and political impact.

In six months, DHS officials will review plans from each of the three contractors and award another contract to demonstrate, test and evaluate a prototype system. The department was allotted $60 million in fiscal 2004 for the effort, and plans to ask Congress for another $60 million in fiscal year 2005 to complete the prototype, said Charles McQueary, DHS undersecretary for science and technology.

The department does not have an estimate yet on how much a countermissile program might cost the government or commercial aviation industry. Parney Albright, DHS assistant secretary for science and technology, said the contractors have to provide estimates of how much a countermissile system will cost, along with the maintenance, reliability and training requirements for their systems.

"What we don't want to have is a situation where we have to do high-performance maintenance at every airport in the country," Albright said. "You can't expect that kind of level of training and support."

Although no commercial planes in the U.S. have been shot with shoulder-fired missiles, they have been in other countries. Last November, an Airbus jet belonging to the German courier service DHL was forced to make an emergency landing in Iraq after being fired upon by a surface-to-air missile. Two shoulder-fired missiles were launched at a U.S. C-141 military aircraft in Baghdad in September, and terrorists attempted to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet filled with tourists as it departed from Mombasa, Kenya, in November 2002.

Albright said the department faces an "extraordinarily difficult" challenge trying to convert military technology for civilian purposes. For example, many military planes use pyrotechnic or pyrophoric flares to draw missiles away, but those flares are flaming balls that cannot be used over heavily populated civilian areas. Another practice consists of directing a high-intensity laser beam into a missile seeker, but the light can be blinding to people on the ground.

Regardless, Albright said the contractors will examine flares and laser beams, as well as ground-based defense systems, for protecting civilian aircraft.