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Pentagon willing to share airline defense technology
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon on Thursday said the Defense Department would make available to commercial airlines the technology used by military jets to protect against shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles -- if the industry requested it. "My guess is, if they wanted the technology we have on some of our military aircraft to defeat this threat, it would be made available. It's a widely available technology, though fairly sophisticated," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said at a town hall meeting at the Pentagon. The threat that those missiles could down a civilian plane has existed for several decades, Myers said, and noted that 35 to 40 such attempts have been made with some success. "Our main role is getting the intelligence on where these assets are," he said. For example, Myers said, Nicaragua has about 2,000 SA-7s and later versions of surface-to-air missiles. "The president down there has agreed they'll be destroyed; in the meantime they've been secured" to prevent terrorists from getting them. "That's sort of the department's role: to try to scoop these up where we can scoop them up. There are lots of them, for that matter, in Iraq." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the technology is expensive. "Obviously, the ticket prices would go up to support those kinds of capabilities," he said. The issue gained prominence this week when a British man was charged with trying to smuggle a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile into the United States for use in a terrorist attack against a U.S. commercial airliner. Terrorists believed to be linked to al Qaeda attempted to use such missiles to shoot down an Israeli plane in Mombasa, Kenya, in November. Each missile weighs only 30 to 40 pounds, and can fit inside a golf bag. The Department of Homeland Security has asked eight government contractors to devise plans for anti-missile technology that could be put on commercial airliners. Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, sent a letter to President Bush, urging him to tell the American people what his administration is doing to address the threat. The senator said he has been "stymied by false arguments that the technology does not yet work for commercial aircraft," noting that U.S. military planes and the Israeli airline El Al already use it. The president's Air Force One is equipped with anti-missile technology. "I am deeply disappointed by the administration's all too halting, slow and incomplete approach to protecting American commercial aircraft from shoulder-fired missiles," Schumer wrote. The senator estimated the cost of outfitting commercial jets with the systems at $7 billion to $10 billion, and suggested the Bush administration use half of the "$9.1 billion annual budget of the Missile Defense Agency to pay for a shoulder-fired missile defense program over the next two years." Since September 11, 2001, advisories have been sent to air carriers citing the possible threat to commercial aircraft from shoulder-fired missiles. One sent in May discussed intelligence indicating al Qaeda had an interest in using missiles against commercial aviation in North Africa and the Middle East.
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