Missile Fix Costly For U.S. Planes
 

AP


Technology to guard airplanes against terrorist missiles is too expensive for commercial airlines and developers should work to come up with something more suitable "as rapidly as possible," a new report says.

Fitting the nation's 6,800 commercial jets with countermeasures against shoulder-fired missiles would cost an estimated $11 billion, with operating costs going up to $2.1 billion annually, said the RAND Corp. report.

The report noted that the federal government now spends about $4.4 billion annually on all transportation security.

Analysts who did the report questioned whether it was even possible to defend against such weapons, and whether in any case terrorists would simply find other ways and other weapons to attack jets.

"Given the significant costs involved with operating countermeasures based on current technology, we believe a decision to install such systems aboard commercial airlines should be postponed until the technologies can be developed and shown to be more compatible in a commercial environment," the report said. "This development effort should proceed as rapidly as possible."

Meanwhile, other approaches should be used to guard against missile attacks, such as a broader program to capture terrorists abroad, foil their attempts at buying missiles and preventing them and their weapons from entering the United States, RAND said.

Government experts have worried for decades about the possibility terrorists would try to down an aircraft with a missile. More than 700,000 shoulder-fired missiles have been produced and thousands are unaccounted for.

Worry about a possible attack surged after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and an incident in 2002, when a missile was fired at an Israeli jet, which was not hit.