MANPAD Mania

Zach Phillips at Government Executive reports on efforts to guard American airplanes from MANPADS -- shoulder launched missiles originally conceived to allow infantry to gain protection against air strikes, but that pose extreme threats to civilian aircraft that are "relatively slow and fly predictable routes, emit large heat signatures and descend to low altitudes miles away from the airport."

The whole concept, however, seems fundamentally misguided. "The government requires a price tag of less than $1 million per unit in quantities of 1,000 units, . . . but even a price below $1 million per unit adds up to a lot of money when installed on hundreds or thousands of airplanes, and neither DHS nor Congress has said who would pay for the technology, a key issue for the financially struggling airline industry." You need to think that through. We're talking about spending billions of dollars to protect airplanes against a threat that, so far in human history, has taken down zero civilian aircraft (once two missiles "narrowly missed an Arkia Israeli Airlines flight taking off from Mombasa, Kenya.") What's more, not only does the price seem high relative to the risk, but the payoff sounds minimal.

A shoulder launched missile is a highly lethal device that an imaginative terrorist in possession of one could sure use to blow a bunch of stuff up even if security measures made it completely impractical to fire them at airplanes. I don't want missiles crashing into office towers or Amtrak passenger trains or what have you. Insofar as there's a real MANPAD problem out there, it seems like it needs to be addressed by preventing the flow of unauthorized missiles into the US, not by equipping planes with inordinately expensive countermeasures.

Comments

"Insofar as there's a real MANPAD problem out there, it seems like it needs to be addressed by preventing the flow of unauthorized missiles into the US"

But what about legitimate hunters who want to use MANPAD's to be able to bring down deer on airplanes?

Y'know, there is a 2nd amendment.

Posted by Petey | June 17, 2007 11:29 AM

What I hate about MANPADS is how they clog up the aircraft lavatory.

Posted by anon | June 17, 2007 11:41 AM

Maybe it's just a cozy relationship between government and the military-industrial complex...

Nah.

Posted by Bill | June 17, 2007 11:41 AM

That really is a terrifying concept, being shot down from the air. Ergh... I wonder if planes will begin keeping parachutes?

Posted by Soccer Mom | June 17, 2007 11:44 AM

Also, I oftentimes feel my house is vulnerable to JetBlue planes breaking and entering and putting my family at risk. MANPAD's are my last line of defense for protecting my domicile.

The 2nd amendment gives me the unambiguous right to shoot down threatening looking JetBlue planes.

You urban liberals will have to pry my MANPAD's out of my cold, dead fingers.

Posted by Petey | June 17, 2007 11:44 AM

That really is a terrifying concept, being shot down from the air. Ergh... I wonder if planes will begin keeping parachutes?

If your plane is struck by a missile, I doubt a parachute would help.

Posted by WillieStyle | June 17, 2007 11:53 AM

Ummm, Petey, unless you live in Saudi Aurora, the last time I checked, Denver counted as 'urban'.

Matthew, this is just typical liberal claptrap. The fact that you are unwilling to go to any lengths to protect the lives of Americans and support the troops simply betrays your lack of patriotism. Imagine this, if you will; what if they were threatening to shoot down the French cargo planes that carry the brie cheese you are undoubtedly scarfing down right now, as we speak? I think you'd be in favor of going on offense against the terrorists then.

If the War on Terror has taught us anything, it's that there's no problem, no matter how unlikely its occurrence, that can't be not solved through the application of billions of tax dollars, preferably extracted from the middle class.

Posted by David S | June 17, 2007 11:53 AM

Matt, Where did you get the picture? The registration beginning with ES is certainly not American.

Posted by Tim | June 17, 2007 12:00 PM

I wonder when the time will come that our country confronts the fact that the physical risk of terrorism, for the average American, is close to zero. People get upset with these kind of comparisons, but it is a simple fact that you are more likely to be killed by bees or drown in a bathtub or die from food poisoning.... I understand that there are emotional, political and social components to terrorism that these risks don't have, and I don't underestimate the emotional pain of losing someone to a terrorist attack. But I think that these comparisons are useful for thinking about simple cost benefit analysis. More people are killed by car accidents in a month in this country than were killed on September 11th. The American public, however, is not particularly excercised to make fundamental changes to our cars or our traffic regulations. The terrorist threat, meanwhile, has caused us to abandon some of our most basic rights and principals.

I don't know enough about this system to tell whether or not the cost is appropriate to the reduction in risk. But we have to come to a point in this country where people can be honest about the real threat of terrorism.

Posted by Freddie | June 17, 2007 12:28 PM

Via James Fallows, here is a crucial bit of evidence from the Cory Liddle airplane crash which illustrates why it's vital that all Americans have MANPAD's.

Posted by Petey | June 17, 2007 12:40 PM

An Enimex Antonov-72? Pourquoi? Is Matt secretly implying the very high-bypass fans on them are less vulnerable, in which case he's probably right? But I've never thought of him as a closet engineer..

Posted by Alex | June 17, 2007 12:46 PM

My grandfather wears MANPADs sometimes when he goes out golfing, but I've never considered him a threat to civil aviation.

Posted by southpaw | June 17, 2007 12:51 PM

Wow, I hate to bring everyone down by injecting a note of seriousness here, but I want to both agree and disagree with Matt.

I agree that installing MANPAD defenses on all commercial aircraft is probably not a cost-effective strategy. On the other hand, this is a debate in a vacuum.

Do a thought experiment. Imagine that a commercial airliner is brought down today by a MANPAD. What will be our response? I'll give you three guesses.

Time's up. Here are the correct answers:

1) Shut down all commercial air movement for a shockingly long time.
2) Install MANPAD defenses on all commercial aircraft.
3) Elect a chest-thumping Republican as our next President.

No, I'm kidding of course. Just killing time waiting for my airplane to take off as I sit here on board drinking from my jumbo juice and checking that I brought my 50 oz shampoo bottle on board. Was running late, so I almost missed the flight. Thank goodness I didn't have to take my shoes off to go through security or anything.

Posted by santamonicamr | June 17, 2007 1:15 PM

Note that a DHL cargo plane took a hit in Baghdad several years back, so its not a complete giveaway to the defense industry.

Posted by Eric | June 17, 2007 3:25 PM

A. I don't think it's cost-effective.

B. um, could you folks do a little fricking research before writing that "zero civilian aircraft" have been shot down by MANPADs.

idiots. the actual number is over 40. oh, they weren't American or European so they don't count.....

Posted by Nathan | June 17, 2007 3:40 PM

Shoulder-fired SAMs are pretty much useless against anything other than airplanes. The warheads are very small, the guidance isn't designed for use against ground vehicles, and they're expensive. Against anything other than an airplane or helicopter, RPGs will be vastly more effective and incredibly cheaper.

Posted by Jake | June 17, 2007 4:05 PM

Actually, the people who say 40 kills are exaggerating for effect, including small planes (such as the one in which the Rwandan president crashed), helicopters, or military cargo planes.

Up until 2001, and there have been none I can recall since, a total of 9 twin-engine or larger civilian airplanes had been confirmed as being taken down by shoulder-launched missiles, with another 10 possibles.

Confirmed kills include 2 Rhodesian Viscounts by Nkomo's rebels with SA-7s, a Sudanese F-27 in 1986 (rebels in that country with a SA-7), two An-26s and an Il-76 over Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, two Tupolevs in Georgia in 1993 (Abkhazian rebels), and a Congo Air 727, shot down by Tutsi rebels in 1998, again with an SA-7.

In Matt's defense, there have been no confirmed kills, at least to my knowledge, of large civilian aircraft outside of the "anti-government rebels with freedom of movement around the airport" scenario, which all the above basically amount to.

Posted by BruceR | June 17, 2007 4:31 PM

Nathan is mostly right. A few of them were American owned civilian aircraft, but those were freighters and shot down outside USA. Most have been shot down in Africa, with a few in Asia and South America.

In terms of human impact, the two leading contenders are a) the Rwandan Presidential aircraft shot down as the opening act of the civil war that included the Rwandan holocaust, killing most of the civilian leadership, or b) a transport shot down in Congo/Angola with about 150 killed.

The million dollar price target was the result of the risk analysis comparing likelihood of a successful attack in the US or Europe, to the impact of a successful attack. The likelihood is very low, because the cheap manpads have trouble hitting modern jets from accessible locations around airports. The impact of a successful attack is very high. The result was a million dollar price limit for defensive equipment.

The expensive manpads can hit the modern jet reliably from accessible locations, but in addition to being expensive, they are intentionally designed with some hard to get short life parts (like weird custom batteries) so that they have a short usable life if stolen. They are a danger, but security measures on the missile reduce the risk to a level comparable to the cheap unreliable manpads.

There are good rational reasons to argue that there are big errors in the manpad risk analysis, but argue from facts and scientific analysis. There are also some big uncertainties around public emotional reactions. The most likely result of a successful attack on a civilian airliner is substantial damage followed by an emergency landing, with most of the passengers surviving. I have no idea how the country would react.

Posted by rjh | June 17, 2007 4:57 PM

Referring to the over 40 claim, that is absolutely true. I submitted an entry earlier with links to Salon and Global Security but it got trapped in the "too many links => spam filter" and hasn't been released. But google manpad site:salon.com and ask Matt to do better research.

Remember research Matt? It's the stuff that separates you from Broder.

Posted by jerry | June 17, 2007 7:31 PM

unfortunately, it is either this, or planes in the future will have to take off and land in undisclosed locations.

Posted by erict | June 17, 2007 7:36 PM

Any particular reason why you chose a picture of an ex-Soviet (Ukranian designed/built) STOL military transport to illustrate this essay?

Interestingly, one of the larger users of the plane (other than Russia) is the Iranian government; quite a few were spotted delivering supplies to NATO troops early in the (current) Afghanistan war.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 17, 2007 9:03 PM

I think a DHL plane was actually hit by a shoulder fired missile in Iraq (it landed safely)
http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/parismatch.htm
(that was a bitch to google, because I thought the express mail company under assault was TNT and searching for TNT and related stuff led to uhm an explosion of irrelevant hits).

Posted by Robert Waldmann | June 17, 2007 11:13 PM

DHL very nearly lost an A-300 freighter in 2003 to a SAM. The pilots were given an award by the Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators for landing it on differential thrust alone, without flight controls. She is, I think, still there in Baghdad - she can't be repaired economically there.

There have been others. An An-26 was shot down by insurgents earlier this year near Balad. I'm aware of at least one An-12 hit over Baghdad that made it. I think at least one big USAF transport survived a SAM hit in the early days.

Posted by Alex | June 18, 2007 4:37 AM

" Insofar as there's a real MANPAD problem out there, it seems like it needs to be addressed by preventing the flow of unauthorized missiles into the US, not by equipping planes with inordinately expensive countermeasures."

I've no idea whether it's aw worthwhile use of resources to install defences, but securing the arms flow to the US will do nothing about the part of a flight that occurs in other countries.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | June 18, 2007 6:11 AM

"Actually, the people who say 40 kills are exaggerating for effect, including small planes (such as the one in which the Rwandan president crashed), helicopters, or military cargo planes."

um, no. one, I'm not including "military cargo planes"...two, Yglesias didn't write "commercial airliners" (which wouldn't be true either...but it would at least be under 20)...he wrote "zero civilian aircraft"...which includes single engine planes and helicopters.

Posted by Nathan | June 18, 2007 9:06 AM

I wonder how cost effective it would be to be able to quickly pinpoint where the missiles are fired from, in order to apprehend the terrorists after the missiles are fired. If this cabability is a lot cheaper than the purely defensive measures, then it might be a better alternative.

Posted by Jim W | June 18, 2007 9:29 AM

Nathan, Jerry, suffice it to say it's kind of my business to know about these things. I couldn't find an authoritative list, so using publicly available research I made my own, linked from here:

http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2003_08_14.html#001044

If you can find any I've missed I'm happy to add. But a list of shot-down aircraft that includes single-props and helos (or military transports) is irrelevant to the debate at hand, which centers on protecting commercial air.

I have seen the "over 40" estimate in multiple media, generally unsourced, and never itemized.

Posted by BruceR | June 18, 2007 9:32 AM

"I wonder how cost effective it would be to be able to quickly pinpoint where the missiles are fired from, in order to apprehend the terrorists after the missiles are fired. If this cabability is a lot cheaper than the purely defensive measures, then it might be a better alternative."

I dunno, I'm sure we can quickly pinpoint suicide bombers in Baghdad (their blood and flesh will be on walls in every direction from the blast) and yet its hard to apprehend someone who's already gone on to his 72 virgins. If you're willing to trade your life for your target, you can take out anyone.

And since obviously no police dragnet is 100% effective, there's a larger pool of potential bombers available who'd rather tap their virgins in this world.

Posted by beowulf | June 19, 2007 12:35 AM