MOJAVE — Hoping to spur public support for equipping commercial airplanes with missile defense systems, Northrop Grumman Corp. has unveiled a 6-foot-long canoe-shaped device that would be attached to the belly of an airliner.
The equipment would work by emitting a laser beam that would jam the guidance system of a shoulder-fired missile. Northrop put the device on display last week at Mojave Airport.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday November 18, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 41 words Type of Material: Correction
Airliner defense system -- An article in Thursday's Business section about Northrop Grumman Corp. unveiling a missile defense system for commercial aircraft misspelled the last name of the executive vice president for the Air Transport Assn., John Meenan, as John Meanen.
The timing of Northrop's public relations event could not have been better. Hours earlier a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted two men on charges of conspiring to smuggle as many as 200 shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles into the U.S. Both men, naturalized U.S. citizens of Chinese descent living in Los Angeles, allegedly tried to broker the sale of Chinese-made QW-2 missiles to undercover FBI agents.
The case is the second involving covert sales of shoulder-fired missiles. A British arms dealer was convicted this year in New Jersey of attempting to broker a deal to sell 200 Russian surface-to-air missiles to an East African terrorist group he thought would use them to shoot down commercial airliners in the U.S.
The cases have renewed attention on efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to protect airlines from portable surface-to-air missiles. It also has intensified the debate over the necessity of defensive systems. Domestic airlines, already financially strapped, are balking at moves to equip their jets with the systems, which could cost up to $1 million per plane.
"It's a huge expenditure of resources to deal with one type of threat," said John Meanen, executive vice president for the Air Transport Assn., which represents major airlines.
The Department of Homeland Security has warned of the widespread availability of portable weapons and that terrorists could use them to shoot down jetliners.
"Airplanes approaching LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] are particularly vulnerable because they are flying over mountains" as they descend, said Jack Pledger, head of the Northrop unit that developed the system.
Thus far, no U.S. passenger plane has been downed by a shoulder-fired missile outside of a combat zone. But 35 foreign civilian aircraft, many in war-torn parts of Africa, have been attacked with shoulder-fired missiles, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Of those, two dozen were shot down, killing 640 people.
