Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets 490
Hugh Pickens writes "As many as three American Airlines passenger jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology intended to protect planes from missile attacks. The tests, which could involve more than 1,000 flights, will determine how the technology holds up under the rigors of flight. The technology is intended to stop attacks by detecting heat from missiles, then responding in a fraction of a second by firing laser beams to jam the missiles' guidance systems. A Rand study in 2005 estimated it would cost about $11 billion to protect every US airliner from shoulder-fired missiles. Over 20 years, the cost to develop, procure and operate anti-missile systems could hit $40 billion."
Moar 9/11 plz! (Score:3, Interesting)
So if we legitimately have to shoot down an hijacked airliner as we should have in September 2001, we won't be able to shoot an AIM-9 at it, we'll have to get close enough in order to shoot it down with the fighter's gun?
Why test it on commercial jets when it'd be much more useful on military planes to say help with anti-missile countermeasures such as flares?
Umm, isn't that the opposite of what you want? (Score:5, Interesting)
Number of passenger planes used as missiles: 3
So, err, don't you want the ability to shoot down passenger planes? Or is the next step to install "special" missiles on buildings that might have passenger planes flown into them in the future which can bypass the anti-missile system? And if that's the plan, what's to stop them bad guys (who are under every bed) from using those missiles to shoot down the planes?
They are weapons (Score:3, Interesting)
Any nation that allows US commercial aircraft into their airspace has suddenly agreed to letting the US military overfly their countries. Aircraft can be flown by remote control, including commercial aircraft with weapons. This is an extremely dangerous precedent. If another nation tried this, the US government would refuse them entry. Other nations are likely to respond the same way.
Think of it as closing the US borders by coercing other nations to do it for us.
point defense saturation (Score:3, Interesting)
the good new is that according to the article the airline running those tests seems to be also very sceptical of those systems.
Exactly, it will never work (Score:3, Interesting)
It is just about fear and using fear to control you. Look we protect you with these nonsense lasers. They can't even shoot missiles down with hug stationary lasers in heavily controlled tests, so they have no chance in real life on the butt of a commercial airliner, no chance.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is wrong with America & American Airli (Score:3, Interesting)
A perfect opportuntity (Score:3, Interesting)
A perfect opportunity to build a laser-jammer tracking missile.
Why, as soon as the laser-jammer starts up, instead of tracking the now-lost IR signature, instead switch to a tracking system that uses that nice strong clear laser signal instead!
Re:How WILL these be tested? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:how many? (Score:4, Interesting)
The cold war era missiles that are still around are unusable without refurbishing/maintenance that, at this point, is more expensive than buying a new missile.
Re:Can anyone spell... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ron Paul has always been very verbal in his pro-life anti-abortion stance, so of course he wants to define life as starting at conception, since abortion would then be murder. Building a fence between on the US-Mexico boarder has become a huge issue since many people do not want people coming across the boarder illegally taking up resources from the system but not paying back into them.
Preventing the Supreme Court from ruling on Establishment Clause is something the feds have no business doing and should be a state issue or even a local issue, not the feds issue. I'm an atheist and certainly do not think laws should be made to keep us out of office simply because we choose not to believe in a god, but on the same token, every inch you give the feds, they take a mile. The state should be left to decide things for themselves.
Our forefathers warned us about entangling alliances with foreign powers which is exactly what the U.N. is, an entangled alliance between foreign powers <URL:http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1400.htm> .
Ending birthright citizenship would cause absolutely no problems for Americans but would considerably hamper illegal immigrants from crossing the board to have a child simply because doing so would allow it to be an American citizen. Being born on our soil does not make you an American. Having American citizen parents raising you with American beliefs and values makes you an American citizen, the rest is just paperwork.
With regards to abolishing the IRS: The more you allow the federal government to do, the more they will do. By allowing them to levy taxes (and they sure as hell do levy a nice chunk of change by the way) allows them to fund all these little projects that do absolutely nothing for the people and everything for big business and their own little pet projects (See the article for a perfection example of wasted tax dollars on ideas that have no merit).
The government shouldn't be telling corporations how to interact with foreign governments unless it poses a risk to our country. Your example does not hurt us in the least. If the American people do not approve of companies actions, they can stop supporting the company any time they wish.
I will agree with you that him being against gay marriage is a mark against him. It really is none of the governments business who wants to marry who.
I'm not for the elector college either but then I think the way we vote is poorly setup and only stays around because the two parties in control don't want it to go away, as it benefits them and pushes out any potential third party which may actually bring some needed change.
The estate tax should be repealed. If you read your own link, how can you possibly be against small families passing on what they earned themselves to their own family. Why should the government get ANYTHING when someone dies? I just can't understand this and am glad he wants to get this repealed.
Regarding racist remarks, you link doesn't show any of that (maybe the page changed or something or I may not have seen it). The NWO conspiracy thing is nuts, I'll grant you that.
All and all he has 3 marks against him and everything else for him. Can you possibly say this about any other candidate running?
Brendan
P.S. Anti-missile tech does not belong on our commercial airplanes nor will they do anything. I can't recall the last time I heard about a commercial jet being shot out of the sky. This just reeks of government wasting money.
Re:Just out of curiousity (Score:4, Interesting)
To a point. I practically score vulcan on personality tests(100% analytical).
Here's the problem with your point - the pie(governmental money, economy as a whole, take your pick) is only so large at any given point in time. Saying 'oh we can just spend $100 Billion instead' isn't a great answer to my point 'Statistical evidence shows that spending the money in this fashion is unlikely to save any lives, so it's better spent elsewhere'. I know the pie is larger than the $11B this proposed system could cost(assuming no overruns), that it's divided into thousands, even millions of pieces. I'm just arguing about the distribution of the pie.
Given that my family doesn't fly every day(I'm normally on planes more than they are), and that we've had a number of fatal mall and school shootings in the last five years, yet no fatal manpad missile strikes on commercial aircraft, I think that my family would be safer spending the money to help with creating a system to catch nuts before they go on a rampage than trying to defend against a thus-far almost non-existent and ineffectual threat.
Re:how many? (Score:1, Interesting)
If they go 'hi-tech', and they're a bunch of 'homegrown Akabars', it will most probably be a 'homebrew' system using some form of wireless guidance linked to an optical (hi-res IR ccd) ground based launch-guidance system (or they'll get their CIA paymasters to give them something new and shiny to do the job) rather than a modded Soviet beastie.
I remember from Afghan War I, early on in that risible game, on TV one night a wonderful bit of film of the Mujahadeen/proto-Taliban trying to Muzzle-load a large (155mm+) caliber Soviet gun of some description they'd just captured, few months later, they were adept at using Soviet systems, and they had Stingers and were using them agin the Soviets..faaast learner is old Akabar, or maybe, just maybe, it was the training the West (UK&US) gave these Mujahadeen/proto-Taliban.
Please don't underestimate 'Akabar', 'Akabar', or his Iraqi brothers were working on fairly sophisticated Guided Missile related Defence projects with the British (extent of my personal knowledge) at the Time of Gulf War I.
'Akabar' has a lot of brothers, in lots of places. Even people who aren't 'brothers' of 'Akabar', but who have the requisite skills, could be persuaded to help, one way $$, or another ££.
'Akabar' has a lot of rich Oily relatives of a similar mindset who could bankroll 'Akabar', merde, we, the West fall over ourselves to give these rich Oily relatives of his lots of our high-tech toys, we even bribe them to buy the fecking things (yet no one seems to ask, "if they'll take money from us, who else will they accept money from, and for what?" ho-hum.
Even if it costs them 20-30K to develop&build a homebrew pulsejet/whatever guided missile, it will still take out an asset worth 40-100 million, plus all the extra billions in spending the morons in charge will then rush out to give to the defence industries to combat this new threat.
Why even bother with designing something from scratch, a 3-axis microlight will set you back about 20K, a couple of Kalashnikovs with a hack fire control system fitted, will be about $500 or less, then all you need is a nut-job (no global shortage there) who will fly the thing right up to an airliner at approach/takeoff/taxi and let rip, bearing in mind, he thinks he's on a one-way trip to paradise so he won't require much (if any) in the way of flight training, so wont flag up in all the systems monitoring those of our brethren of a darker skinned persuasion who try to book flying lessons, hell, drop the Kalashnikovs, and bolt a standard RPG (cost, RPG-29 horribly cheap at less than a thousand dollars, ammo included) onto the microlight, mod the firing system, off you go.
Point of this is, if they want to take an airliner out, they will find a way. This whole thing (laser defence) is part of the generic FUD regarding 'Global Terrorism' we're all supposed to believe.
What's next: Phalanx type system for civilian aircraft?
- This should have been posted a couple of hours ago - but got called away to do some Owl and Fox watching
Re:how many? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how many? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how many? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, shoulder-fired missiles are a huge step up from machine guns. To say that you can do the same damage with a machine gun is just stupid -- shooting a plane down with a gun is significantly harder and requires much more time on the ground; you can't 'shoot and scoot' like you can with a Stinger or similar.