RAND Issues Report; Test Gets Underway With NWA; Missile Bought In Nicaraguan Sting

By Senior ANN Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

The thorny question of whether, how and why commercial airlines ought to be protected from man-portable air defense missiles has been all over the news lately, and three particular developments are making news.

In the first place, the RAND Corporation, the archetypal think tank, has produced a study which concludes defending airlines against missiles is a losing proposition -- it costs too much. But Northrop Grumman and Northwest Airlines apparently don't agree -- a new N-G antimissile system is under test on an NWA airframe. Finally, events in Nicaragua, where renegade Army officers may be trying to sell a secret stash of SA-7 Strela (NATO "Grail") missiles to terrorists, underscore exactly why serious people are thinking about this farfetched idea.

RAND and Missiles

"It is currently not cost-effective to spend billions of dollars equipping America's 6,800 commercial airliners with systems to guard against attacks from shoulder-fired missiles," the RAND corporation concluded in a very widely reported study this week.

The numbers tell the tale. It would cost $11 billion to install the systems, not including the $2.1 billion needed every year to run them. These astronomical numbers mean next to nothing on their own, so Rand suggested comparing them to today's transportation security spending. Right now, all government spending on all transportation security, not just air, adds up to $4.4 billion a year.

“...[G]iven what we spend today, a large investment in technology still unproven in commercial airlines doesn't appear appropriate,” RAND's James Chow, author of the study, said.

In addition, present military systems have significant problems. One of the most intolerable, in the airline environment, is a propensity for frequent false alarms.

That doesn't mean that RAND suggests ignoring the threat, only that the think tank's people believe other approaches can better address this risk. They suggest working harder to keep terrorists from getting missiles, improving airports' perimeter security, and enhancing the hit-survivability of airliners.

In addition, while sounding a cautionary note about today's antimissile systems, RAND notes that improving technology may solve the technical problems, and lower the costs. In time, the authors write, "the investment could be justified... if anti-missile systems are made more economical and reliable."

Northrop Grumman and NWA

According to multiple media reports, a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 will be fitted with a new Northrop Grumman anti-missile system this year. The laser-based system, named "Guardian," is supposed to be cheaper than competing systems, perhaps addressing some of RAND's complaints.

The purpose of these initial flight tests are to ensure that the system does not cause stability, control or other aerodynamic problems. This testing will become part of the FAA certification package for the Guardian system. Passengers will not be carried during these tests.

Guardian is an offshoot of military Directed InfraRed CounterMeasures (DIRCM) technology, and is based on a successful Northrop Grumman military product, the AN/AAQ-24(V) Nemesis, which is in production and in use by US and British air forces. The peculiar blisters on the pictures we showed you recently of the MC-130 crash in Iraq were from this system. The system is entirely automatic and does not need any attention from the pilots or other aircrew.

Northrop Grumman will also be working with FedEx to begin flight tests on an MD-11 airframe sometime during 2005. The project is largely funded through the Department of Homeland Security.

The Nicaraguan Connection?

An international group of police busted a small group of would-be arms dealers this month in Nicaragua. The issue suddenly got the undivided attention of people in very high places when the weapon they provided as proof of their bona fides was a live SA-7 Strela anti-aircraft weapon, the one used to date in almost all terrorist attacks on airliners. Taken into custody by the Nicaraguan police, the prospective death merchants gave up their source -- a group of officers in the Nicaraguan Army.

Around that time the Army inadvertently confirmed the suspect's story -- sending a Colonel, possibly one of the conspirators, to try to intimidate the police into giving up the weapon. This drama unfolded to the public in a Washington Times story by the Times's military reporter, Rowan Scarborough.

Some disturbing inferences can be drawn from the facts in the Scarborough article. The SA-7's serial number is not on the list of the declared weapons of the Nicaraguan armed forces. The weapon is believed to have been sourced from clandestine stocks held by officers who remain loyal to the Sandinista party and its Communist ideals. When the Sandinistas were in power, they received enormous quantities of arms of all kinds from Cuban and Russian sources. These weapons were used to fight "Contra" guerillas and intimidate the population at home, but were also re-exported to other lands for use by revolutionary and terrorist groups.

That wheel may have come full circle. The peddlers of the missile were expecting a payday in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars per missile. They thought they were dealing with Colombian terrorists -- and mentioned that they were willing to sell to Muslim terrorists as well. If they had any compunction about dealing with terrorists, they didn't let on.

This particular SA-7 is now secured, but it is inevitable that Washington will turn up the heat on Managua about getting these renegade stocks accounted for and destroyed. Those whose job it is to worry about such things are now losing sleep over whether the missile that the police seized in Nicaragua was the first that their three suspects tried to sell... or only the most recent.

Summary

The RAND report makes clear that a successful terrorist missile attack would have enormous human and financial costs. It also points out that denying terrorists the means will be an uphill fight. About three quarters of a million MANPADS have been manufactured, and according to RAND "many thousands of the weapons are unaccounted for." As the Nicaraguan incident illustrates, governments try to preserve the secrecy of their stocks of such sophisticated arms, and weapons in government arsenals are not safe from sale into the black market.

The best answer to this threat is probably a series of concentric lines of defense around commercial aircraft. First, aggressive operations to hunt and neutralize the terrorists who have the motive to make such an attack. Second, continued stings like the successful Nicaraguan-American police operation. Missile buy-backs like the ones that have been conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan are also crucial, and more and better eyes on airport perimeters are needed.

If there is an attack, there will be no stopping the hysteria which will result in a demand for DIRCM on every plane. For that reason alone, it's wise to continue DIRCM research and try to find ways to bring the costs under control, so that a fleet-wide DIRCM installation becomes a possibility, rather than a pipe dream.

Of course, if the entire fleet has countermeasures capability, the terrorists will work overtime trying to find DIRCM's vulnerabilities. Which brings us back to aggressive operations to hunt down and neutralize the terrorists.

FMI: www.rand.org, www.northropgrumman.com