=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2002/11/30/MN89437.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, November 30, 2002 (SF Chronicle) U.S. jets easy target for shoulder-fired missiles/Kenya attack highlights h= ow terrorists might down plane here Paul J. Caffera, Special to The Chronicle On the afternoon of Nov. 5, representatives of the Office of Homeland Security, President Bush's secretary of transportation, Norman Mineta, and other senior officials were brought together with 25 airline CEOs in a secret meeting convened by the Transportation Security Administration. Gathered in a secure conference room in the Department of Transportation in Washington, they heard evidence of the growing and intractable threat that shoulder-fired, infrared-homing missiles pose to crowded commercial jets taking off and landing at U.S. airports. The meeting was prompted in part by a CIA warning that terrorist groups had, in recent months, smuggled shoulder-fired missiles into the United State= s. The revelations were ominous for the millions of Americans who fly each year -- more so in the wake of the almost successful missile strike on an Israeli charter jet in Kenya on Thursday. In the view of aviation security experts, every commercial flight is susceptible to a similar attack by terrorists armed with launchers that are small, relatively easy to obtain -- and more accurate than the aging Russian missiles used this week. So far, neither the government nor the airline industry has been able to do much to mitigate the danger of what the head of one security firm describes as "aviation's dirty little secret." "(If a) dedicated person wanted to shoot down a plane, there's nothing to stop them," said Todd Curtis, the creator of AirSafe.com and a former Air Force officer and Boeing safety analyst. Well before Thursday and before the recent CIA warning, intelligence and security officials have known of the danger posed by these missiles. The alarms had begun to sound louder after the discovery of al Qaeda training videos instructing terrorists how to fire the portable anti-aircraft missiles, and the capture of thousands of such missiles in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. In a detailed bulletin issued to state and local police agencies on May 22, the FBI warned that al Qaeda might be planning to use shoulder-fired missiles - - formally called MANPADS, for man-portable air defense systems -- against commercial aircraft within the United States. "Given al Qaeda's demonstrated objective to target the U.S. airline industry, its access to U.S. and Russian made MANPAD systems and recent apparent targeting of U.S.-led military forces in Saudi Arabia," the bulletin stated, "law enforcement agencies in the United States should remain alert to potential use of MANPADS against U.S. aircraft." The FBI's concern is well-founded. Shoulder-fired missiles have already been used to shoot down commercial aircraft outside the United States, and the respected Jane's Intelligence Review reported last year that the missiles are now in the hands of up to 27 terrorist groups. Reports from the CIA, State Department and other government agencies show that shoulder-fired missiles have already hit at least 42 civil aircraft since the 1970s, killing over 900 air travelers. Such attacks on civil aircraft have been launched from land and from water, upon takeoff and landing, and at altitudes reaching to 11,000 feet. While most of these attacks have occurred outside North America proper, the weapons have been used in Central America. The prospect of a shoulder-launched missile attack was a major concern of the Federal Aviation Administration during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Simple to launch, such weapons "are a serious threat, (and) not enough is being done to deal with it," said retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for President Ronald Reagan. U.S. SUPPLIED AFGHAN REBELS Introduced during the Vietnam War, shoulder-fired missiles first gained widespread fame in the Soviet Union's conflict in Afghanistan, where U.S.- supplied Stingers are credited with turning the tide against the Soviets. Of the more than 900 Stingers supplied to the Afghan rebels, many were never fired and remained available for use or trade. Dozens of other countries have produced hundreds of thousands of shoulde= r- fired missiles, many of them finding their their way to the international black market. Despite Afghanistan's status as a pariah nation in the years leading up to the U.S. air war, the Taliban and al Qaeda were able to secure immense quantities of these deadly weapons systems. Last August, a Pentagon spokesman said U.S. forces in Afghanistan had captured 5,592 shoulder-fired missiles during operations to destroy al Qaeda bases there. Even when they're sold to legitimate governments for self-defense, there is no guarantee that such missiles will remain secure. In 1998, soldiers in the former Soviet republic of Georgia staged an uprising and seized a cache of the shoulder-launched missiles. Likewise, Chechen rebels obtained their initial supply of shoulder-fired missiles by overrunning Russian arsenals, and have used them to shoot down Russian helicopters. Regardless of their source, shoulder-fired missiles are small enough to easily smuggle into any country, including the United States, and they're available on the black market for under $100,000 each, well within reach of deep-pocketed terrorist groups like al Qaeda. Neither are U.S. stockpiles completely safe. After completing an inspection of U.S. military storage depots, the General Accounting Office concluded that inventory control of domestic shoulder-fired missile stockpiles has been so poor that the military could not account for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of its portable missiles. One Army official quoted by the GAO said that it would be "pure luck" if none of the missiles were lost. While Thursday's incident may have woken up both the government and the airline industry to the threat, experts have long felt frustrated in their attempts to sound the alarm. During a classified briefing at the annual Aircraft Survivability conference in Monterey in 1999, a Federal Aviation Official described the difficulty in getting airlines to address the threat of shoulder-fired missiles. A subsequent report from the National Defense Industrial Association, which sponsored the conference, noted that "since there have been no confirmed incidents in the U.S., it is difficult to convince aircraft manufacturers and airline companies of the potential cost benefits to making the aircraft less susceptible and less vulnerable to MANPADS. . . ." VERSATILE, PORTABLE, DANGEROUS Shoulder-fired missiles are self-contained weapons systems. Typically 5 feet long and weighing less than 35 pounds, they are easily concealed in shipping containers, aboard a small boat, even in the trunk of a car. Traveling at more than 1,500 miles per hour, a typical shoulder-launched missile can destroy an aircraft from up to four miles away. The latest generation of such weapons can travel 15,000 feet or higher. Under existing FAA flight rules, aircraft approaching U.S. airports are within range of a shoulder-launched missile attack once they get within 40 to 50 miles of the runway. Put in simpler terms, jets are most vulnerable to attack right about the time flight attendants instruct passengers to turn off their electronic devices. Unlike some of the other threats that emerged with the Sept. 11 attacks, the government has known about the threat posed by shoulder-fired missiles since at least 1973, when Palestinian terrorists armed with such missiles were arrested in Rome as they waited to shoot down a jet. The first successful use of these weapons to "kill" a commercial aircraft outside a war zone came in 1978, in the skies over Chad. Since then, many government agencies have grown increasingly alarmed by the threat that shoulder-fired missiles pose. The FAA's annual Criminal Acts Against Civil Aviation report contains a section that tracks missile attacks. Asked to describe the likelihood of a shoulder-fired missile attack against commercial aircraft within the continental United States, one official within the intelligence community, said the only question is when. "Some of us are surprised that it hasn't already happened." MILITARY HARDENS ITS DEFENSES Because of their increased threat, the Air Force is starting to replace its standard missile-detection and defense systems with so-called "large aircraft infrared countermeasures" -- LAIRCMs -- that use laser jammers to disorient an attacking infrared-homing missile. But most civilian aircraft lack such systems. There are two exceptions: Israel's El Al Airlines, and some of the private jets owned by corporations and wealthy individuals. Even though small commercial aircraft are more likely to go down in a shoulder-fired missile attack, two of the passenger jets most familiar to Americans have proven surprisingly vulnerable. Of the five Boeing 727s and 737s hit by shoulder-launched missiles, three have been shot down, with 130 people dying in the one struck just after takeoff in Angola. The Israeli charter jet in Kenya that narrowly avoided destruction by two missiles -- thought to be 35-year-old, somewhat inaccurate Strela -- was a Boeing 757. "This is not only an Israeli problem," said Avi Pazner, a government spokesman. "What can be done against an Israeli aircraft, can easily be done against a European or American one." Despite the warnings, few improvements have been made to commercial aircraft design or flight operations to reduce the threat. While the president and other officials travel on aircraft equipped with countermeasures systems that protect them against a missile attack, most Americans do not. "The threats are real and the countermeasures exist," said a retired government anti-terrorism expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Some of us are perplexed as to why a greater sense of urgency hasn't been demonstrated in securing our airspace." Said Daniel Benjamin, the former director for counterterrorism for President Bill Clinton's National Security Council: "No shortage of studies have been done, and up till now, the industry has been unwilling to consider paying for the defensive measures. "In the post-9/11 environment, with Washington dictating more in the way of security improvements," Benjamin added, "there needs to be another look at the issue. With many airlines facing huge financial problems and some staring at insolvency, the problem of paying for the improvements -- which is considerable -- is not going away." Over the years, the military has developed a number of techniques for deflecting shoulder-fired missiles from its aircraft. One is for low-flying aircraft to disperse red-hot flares designed to attract the missile's attention to the heat and light. Unfortunately, newer shoulder-fired missiles are able to distinguish an aircraft from a flare. The military has also experimented with using "obscurants," fine metallic or chemical particles dispersed from an aircraft to prevent a missile from locking on, and the Pentagon is investigating the feasibility of having an aircraft tow infrared decoys behind it. The military has also used "thermal management" -- suppressing the amount of emitted infrared radiation and thereby presenting a smaller infrared "signature" -- to reduce the likelihood that the infrared seeker will lock on to its intended victim. Unfortunately, these techniques are not practical for commercial aircraf= t. One could imagine the outcry from people whose businesses or homes lie in airport approach and departure corridors from dozens of flares being dropped daily upon takeoff and landing. Thermal management is also of minimal use: in contrast to military aircraft, designed from the beginning to present small infrared signatures, commercial aircraft have huge "signatures." Additionally, modern shoulder-fired missiles are programmed with sophisticated guidance systems that nullify aircraft designers' attempts to guide infrared-homing missiles to less deadly impact points. Because of the threat posed to its large aircraft, the ones most similar to commercial jets, the Air Force is embarking on an ambitious plan to install LAIRCMs on its transport planes. Standard countermeasures systems combine a missile-launch detector, a warning system and flash lamps to confuse an attacking missile. For a cost of just over $3 million for each of the first 20 aircraft to receive the system, the Air Force is obtaining the best available protection. Such countermeasures would add just 1.5 percent to the cost of a $200 million Boeing 747-400, or 5 percent to the cost of a $60 million Boeing 737. On the negative side for airlines, the cost of properly maintaining this system is high, which would put a strain on the already-struggling carriers. Additionally, it is unlikely that the military would support such wide distribution of this sensitive technology. AIRSPACE PROTECTION PLAN An alternative to installing countermeasures systems on every aircraft is to protect the airspace above airports and in airport approach and departure routes. The Air Force has recently developed a plan to do just that. Known as escort-directed infrared countermeasures, or E-DIRCM, this proposal would use "buddy" aircraft equipped with the latest countermeasures technology to rendezvous with airliners as they approach airports and then escort them to the ground; similarly, departing aircraft would be escorted until they reached an altitude out of range of portable missiles. Should a terrorist unleash a missile attack, the escort aircraft would detect the launch and use its laser jammers to disable the attacking missile or missiles. On the negative side, E-DIRCM would require an enormous number of government-operated buddy aircraft, greatly increase airport noise and congestion, strain an already burdened air-traffic control system, and significantly increase the likelihood of midair collisions in the areas surrounding airports. Still, The question remains: Will corrective action be taken before flights are shot down, or will it happen only after American air travelers die in a missile attack? Paul J. Caffera is an investigative reporter and writer based in Rochester, N.Y. A longer version of this article was first published on Salon.com.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle