GlobalSecurity.org In the News

Washington Post
October 5, 2001
Pg. 32

By Vernon Loeb and John Mintz, Washington Post Staff Writers

Dozens of militaries around the world operate surface-to-air missiles capable of downing commercial airliners, but they typically impose strict airspace controls to ensure that mishaps do not occur during tests, missile experts inside and outside the U.S. government said yesterday.

While the United States and the former Soviet Union first developed surface-to-air missile technology in the 1960s and made the systems widely available to allies throughout the Cold War, there have been no known instances in which civilian airliners have been mistakenly shot down during testing exercises.

The Russian airliner that exploded yesterday over the Black Sea apparently was shot down mistakenly by a surface-to-air missile operating in the Crimean region of Ukraine on the Black Sea during a training exercise, U.S. officials said.

These officials said the S-200 system, known as the SA-5 by NATO, may have fired missiles toward one or more pilotless targets or drones, which are used to test missile accuracy. But one of the missiles apparently diverted from its target, and instead headed for the jetliner, they said.

"One of the great challenges to air defense has always been identification of friend or foe," said Andrew Krepinevich, a former U.S. Army air defense officer who is now executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

But Krepinevich said that testing of surface-to-air missiles like the U.S.-built Patriot and the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system is done at remote missile ranges with exceedingly tight controls on airspace that keep airliners from going anywhere near a test.

Larry Furrow, chief of public affairs at the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, said the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits airliners from flying over the 3,200-square mile range during all tests. Often, he added, when long-range missiles like an advanced version of the Patriot are being tested, the expanse of prohibited airspace over the range is doubled.

Furthermore, White Sands and the FAA use radar to track everything over the range -- and over the entire state of New Mexico -- during tests to ensure that airliners are not in the area, Furrow said.

"We know what's in that airspace at all times," Furrow said.

Finally, all missiles tested at White Sands that have enough range to exit the controlled airspace at White Sands are equipped with a system that can destroy the missile before it leaves the range if it fails to accomplish its intended intercept or malfunctions in some other way.

Retired Navy Capt. John R. Bramer, a former Navy pilot and cruise missile expert, said that the Navy also goes to great lengths to establish total airspace control when it tests ship-based surface-to-air missiles during training exercises at sea.

"We do a radar scan of an entire area to make sure there's nothing flying in," Bramer said. "It's safety on top of safety -- people looking on top of other people and double looking."

Military experts in both the United States and Ukraine said that the Russian airliner may have strayed into a "live fire" area without any warning, possibly as a result of poor air traffic control from the ground.

Those experts said that Ukrainian air defense units are inexperienced because they lack the money to train regularly. They also said airline pilots don't expect to confront missile tests in that area.

The experts said that the surface-to-air missile system that most likely downed the jet has a guidance system that could easily be distracted from its intended target by a passing jetliner.

The missiles are guided in part by radar batteries on the ground. The ground radar units sweep the skies, at any moment surveilling a cone-shaped zone extending upward from the ground.

Whatever is the largest object in that cone-shaped area will draw the attention of the radar as well as the missile lofting skyward. The missile itself has what is called a "semi-active seeker," a radar sensor that picks up the data sent from the ground, and is supposed to lock onto and head toward its target.

U.S. officials said the airliner may have strayed into the area that the ground radar was covering, and provided a target that was much larger and more inviting than the relatively small drone.

"A seeker on a missile is always going to head for the bigger target," said a U.S. military official familiar with Ukrainian air defenses.

The Soviets first developed the SA-5 in the 1950s to shoot down high-flying U.S. aircraft like the U-2 spy plane and long-range bombers. Numerous upgrades have been made on the weapon system since then, and the Soviets and Russians have sold it to several other nations, including Libya, Syria and North Korea, according to John Pike, a missile expert who direct Globalsecurity.org, a defense and intelligence think tank.

U.S. military experts also think the decrepit condition of the civilian air-traffic control system in the former Soviet Union played a role in the accident -- either because ground controllers failed to warn the airline pilots about the live-fire zone or failed to warn the military commanders that a jetliner was getting dangerously close.

Copyright 2001 Washington Post