Homeland Security and Defense December 4, 2002
U.S. Warned Airlines of Threat from Shoulder-Fired Missiles
By Paul Hoversten
Long before last week's attempted missile shoot-down of an Israeli commercial jetliner in Africa, top U.S. transportation officials had warned chief executives of major airlines of a threat from terrorists armed with shoulder-fired missiles.
Chet Lunner, public affairs chief at the Department of Transportation (DOT), said in an interview that the executives had been warned on Nov. 5 during a meeting at DOT headquarters that lasted several hours.
Briefing the executives were retired Adm. James Loy, head of the Transportation Security Administration, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and representatives from the White House Office of Homeland Security. The meeting focused an an "awareness and a briefing" about the threat of such weapons, Lunner said.
Leaders of the Senate intelligence Committee said Dec. 1 they expected more attacks from terrorists with shoulder-fired missiles. "Let's be honest about it. There are thousands of these surface-to-air missiles around the world," Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), committee vice-chairman, said on Fox News Sunday. "Eventually, that's going to tie one of the methods for the terrorists to hit."
Just days earlier, on Nov, 28, attackers in Mombasa, Kenya, launched two shoulder-fired missiles at an Israeli Boeing 757-300 taking off for Israel with 27l people aboard. Both missiles narrowly missed the aircraft.
Though the FBI has warned that al Qaeda terrorists were planning "spectacular attacks" on such targets as the airline industry, the federal government has not required airlines to do anything specific to respond to the threat from shoulder-fired missiles, DOT's Lunner said. But often the airlines will tell DOT what steps they have taken to counteract perceived threats, he added.
"Our lab is to pass along this information [on threats] to our stakeholders..., We have a continuing dialogue," he said.
The FBI in May warned airlines that terrorists may have smuggled surface-to-air missiles into the United States. Earlier that month, Saudi authorities found the remains of a three-foot-long missile launching tube at Prince Sultan Air Base used by U.S. troops. The tube may have belonged to al Qaeda operatives, the Saudis said.
"There's no way of knowing how many [missiles] or of what type the bad guys would have," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "It is certain, however, that the number of shoulder-fired missiles in the hands of terrorists is relatively large in relation to the number of aircraft that have been shot down."
One of the best known of the shoulder-fired systems is the U.S.-made, heat-seeking Stinger, produced by Hughes Missile Systems, General Dynamic and Raytheon. In the mid-1980s, the CIA delivered up to 500 of the 35-pound, five-foot-long Stingers to Afghan rebels fighting Soviet troops. The weapons cost about $38,U00 each. The Russian equivalent to the modern Stinger is the SA-18.
The Stinger works at low altitudes, up to 10,000 feet, and has a three-mile range. It is no threat to bombers or high-flying aircraft, but could be effective against helicopters or aircraft near the ground.
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the CIA tried to buy back the remaining Stingers from Afghan fighters. But about 200 Stingers wound up with fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden, according to a 1998 estimate by the Congressional Research Service. Those particular Stingers probably are no longer effective because the batteries were only good for about a year, Pike said in an Interview.
Aircraft can be taken down with other types of weapons, Pike pointed out. The U.S. Black Hawk helicopters downed in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993, for example, were hit with rocket-propelled grenades, he said.
U.S. military aircraft typically deploy powerful flares as counter-measures to heat-seeking missiles.
Commercial airlines could be outfitted with high-intensity strobe lights to thwart the infrared sensors on the missile, Pike said. The strobe lights would be activated during landings and takeoffs.
"Airlines have not done that because they haven't determined whether the threat is sufficiently real to warrant spending the money to do this," he said.
"The problem is, you have to demonstrate that there's a real threat, tryst there's a unique threat and that the solution is going to be effective. Those have been a series of tests that airlines haven't been able to meet yet."
- Paul Hoversten (paul_haversten@AviationNow.com)
© 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
