Thu, Jan 27, 2005
Rand Study Suggests Rounding Up Weapons May Be Better
Bargain
To hear the Rand Corporation tell
it, trying to develop an anti-missile system for commercial
aircraft should take a back seat to trying to get those ubiquitous
missiles off the market altogether.
"The whole question is this: Should we spend sums of money to
install countermeasures aboard our airliners right now?" Jim Chow,
a Rand engineer and the study's principal author. "And our
conclusion is that it wouldn't be prudent to do that, unless we
make them more affordable or, as a nation, decide to significantly
increase spending on homeland security."
The study, which was released on Tuesday, said perfecting and
manufacturing a laser-based guidance system for missile defensive
systems would cost billions -- a price tag the ailing airline
industry can ill afford. Instead, Chow found that it might be much
more effective to initiate measures to take SAMs -- especially the
shoulder-fired variety -- off the market. The Los Angeles Times
reports those measures could well include a buy-back program
sponsored by the US and other nations that have sold SAM technology
in the past. The CIA's program to buy back Stinger missiles and
their launch systems from the Afghan militants to whom they were
sold is a prime example. Another idea: spend more money to make
interdicting the import of shoulder-fired missiles a much higher
and more effective priority.
"The fact that no known attempts
have yet been made against US civil carriers suggests that either
the required assets are not in place or that Al Qaeda's leaders are
waiting for what they regard as a more propitious time to undertake
such attacks," the report said, according to the LA Times.
Obviously, the airline and cargo industries are watching
developments along these lines very, very closely.
"The Rand report underscores our belief that missile defense
systems being proposed today for commercial aviation consist of
unproven technologies that not only would cost tens of billions of
dollars to deploy, but could expose the airline industry to other
serious threats" by siphoning money away from other security
programs, said the Air Transport Association in a statement to
ANN.
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