airliner missile defense: grounded due to costs

score one for the "reality-based lifestyle" folks. it is astounding to see logic and economic sense anywhere near this administration!!

lets see what percentage of the GDP or the current budget is a measley 11 billion dollars....I wonder how fast they will come up with airliner anti-missile countermeasures, if and when a few airliners get popped outta the skies with manpads... they evidently have done a cost-benefit analysis that its cheaper to pay out insurance to 300 dead people on a regular basis then spend the 11 billion up front... Or maybe the airlines will get congress to pass new laws that would prevent the airliners from being sued in this case....

shockie B)

The money would be better spent getting the bad guys and not letting it happen in the first place rather than trying to play defense. Of couse you also have to take actions that actually improve the situation rather than just hit a hornet nest with a stick.

Brad Hitch

shockwaveriderz wrote:

measley 11

astounding to

"just hit a hornet nest with a stick", seems to be the currently popular tactic.

No, it's much more likely that their cost-benefit analysis showed that there's no reason to think anybody's going to successfully knock down an airliner with a missile any time soon.

Just what exactly does the above statement mean?

I think he is speaking from his own experiences...

Now *THAT* makes sense.

The mosaic is becoming clearer all the time.

no reason to think anybody's going to successfully knock down an airliner with a missile any time soon.

And to think all that effort by the B.A.T.F. went to waste. Makes you think that we can't trust our own government to know what it's doing.

Chuck

Joe Pfeiffer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@cs.nmsu.edu:

Northrop-Grumman already has one for sale.(check their web site) IIRC,an Israeli company has one,too.

And probably ignored the financial effects of planes not flying after a jet was shot at or downed.

Those MANPADS have small warheads;too small for a regular passenger jet. A successful hit (but no crash) still would have great financial impact. One might even manage to kill/wound some pax from fragments/engine debris penetrating the fuselage.(that already happened with an engine failure on a commercial flight some years ago)

I wonder about who did the study and who paid for it. (airline companies,who don't want to have to install them?)

The above in an independent assessment by the Rand Corp. It says nothing about the logic or economic sense of the current administration. The administration could still have the things installed, or nationalize the airline industry, or any other fool thing.

Shhh

:)

Umm, no. The study explicitly acknowledges that a successful attack would result in direct economic damage of more than $11 billion, with even greater intangible effects.

They determined that relative to a limited transportation-security budget ($4.4 billion annually), spending nearly half that (based on 20-year amortization of acquisition and maintenance costs) for this partially-effective defense system would not be a cost-effective allocation of resources. Put another way, there are more cost-effective ways to spend our finite security dollars. I'd much rather see the incremental security dollar going toward the threat of weapons of mass destruction than this one. Filling holes ensuring effective use in funding of the Nunn-Lugar initiative for conversion of ex-Soviet nuke technology would be much higher and better use of funds.

Given the terrorist's almost unlimited ability to choose methods of attack, you could probably spend the entire US GDP several times over on security measures that would individually have economic cost lower than the damage they are designed to prevent. In government, it's a matter of prioritization, not blue-sky justification assuming infinite funding resources.

Bingo! Besides, Shock's cynical comment fails to consider the fact that it's the customer who pays. If the airlines had to spend 11 billion dollars installing anti-missile systems, how many people would be willing to pay thousands of dollars extra per trip to cover the cost of the system? Not to mention additional price increases making up the loss of revenue from those who can no longer afford to fly?

He BELIEVES in the nanny state.

Minor ($300b) nit: Terrorism was abated by locking the airplane doors and invading the middle east in general.

Jerry

I do not believe in a nanny state..... maybe a little corporate welfare.... I think FEDGOV should provide tax incentives to the airliners to put the anti missile systems in place....

I'd be less nervous about the hypothetical "terrorist attacks" such a system would be intended to protect against than about risks involved in manufacturing and maintaining it... the army works with this sort of hardware all the time, and _they_ have accidents... what happens in an airliner-maintenance environment where there's more pressure to "rush it out the door and get on with the next job ticket"? If such a "defensive" missle were to discharge accidentally, the airlines would have _really_ "shot themselves in the foot" as far as making the passengers feal safe!

-dave w

I don't believe we are talking about anti missile missiles, more like, infrared jammers and chaff and the like.

They locked the doors exactly as the Israelis have been telling them for YEARS.

THEY know the terrorism threat is dispersed and ALL the efforts of Homeland Security and "First Responders" are FEEL-GOOD measures and have no anti-terrorist benefits whatsoever.

Or I do.

Jerry