In a report to be released Tuesday, the CATO Institute warns that US commerical airplanes are at risk of being shot down and that the economic damage of such an attack, in addition to lives lost, could be "devastating."

"The US government should take advantage of available technology currently used on military aircraft to protect the US commercial aircraft fleet," the report said, placing the cost of outfitting all 6,800 US commercial aircraft with "advanced laser-jamming infrared countermeasures" at 11 billion dollars to start plus 2.1 billion dollars per year after that.

"Certainly the US government can find needless spending equal to less than one-half of one percent of its budget to help fulfill its primary responsibility of providing for the common defense," CATO said.

The group noted that the downing of a single airliner could scare Americans out of the air, seriously damaging the US economy. The report cited one damage estimate of as much as 70 billion dollars.

"If even a single airliner is shot down by a missile, public confidence will not be easily restored," CATO said.

The institute said shoulder-fired missiles can be bought on the black market for "as little as 5,000 dollars" and claims that dozens of terrorist organizations, including Al-Qadea, may have the weapons.

In November 2002, assailants attempted to hit an Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya with a shoulder fired missile.

In a report released in January, the RAND corporation said arming US commerical airliners against possible ground-to-air missile strikes would been too expensive for the industry.

"Over 20 years, the cost to develop, procure and operate these systems would amount to an estimated 40 billion," it said.

RAND researchers also said were too many questions about how defense systems would operate on commercial airlines, such as false alarms that may occur and whether attackers could find ways to sidestep such safeguards.

The US Transportation Security Administration was not immediate available for comment on the CATO report.

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