Later this month, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems are scheduled to carry out tests on civilian airliners with laser defense systems designed to misdirect hand-held, shoulder-fired missiles. The tests will be carried out for the Department of Homeland Security's systems engineering and development office. The results are to be sent to Congress early next year.

At stake will be a potential order for $6 billion worth of systems for the 6,800 airliners of the U.S. civil airliner fleet.

In the emotional days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks the decision whether or not to go ahead with ordering such systems would have been a no-brainer. U.S. complacency in the face of the terrorist threat had just been exposed at the cost of more than 2,800 lives. No one knew the extent of the capabilities of al-Qaida and other Islamist terror organizations. The $150 billion a year annual budget surplus that President George W. Bush had just inherited from his predecessor Bill Clinton was still a recent memory. And policymakers and politicians alike assumed that the U.S. military-industrial complex could rise to any new technical challenge made on it within budget and on schedule.

By in mid-2006, the grand strategic picture facing U.S. policymakers is a very different one. The annual budget deficit is in the region half a trillion dollars a year. The United States is conducting two expensive wars at the same time in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end in sight. Work on the ambitious space-based weapons and anti-ballistic missile systems driven by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon planners is notorious for being years behind and costing scores of billions of dollars more than it was budgeted for. And the Department of Homeland Security has proven to be an administrative shambles across the board since it was created three and a half years ago.

The laser missile defense project for U.S. airliners has proven no exception to this depressing general pattern. As we documented in our previous BMD Focus column, the program was supposed to have a high priority five years ago. But the tests for the competing systems are only now to be held.

In the meantime, the political climate has changed dramatically. Critics of the proposed program note that there has been no attempt in the preceding five and half years to shoot down any airliner operating within the United States using such weapons, while grave doubts persist on how effective either of the proposed new systems will be.

Some critics also note that following the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the U.S. intelligence and domestic security services have so afar proven highly effective at preventing any serious terrorist attack or series of attacks on U.S. soil. They argue that the huge investment required in putting the new systems on U.S. airliners would be better spent beefing up proactive police work and intelligence to nip such attacks in the bud.

Northrop and BAE Systems each have Department of Homeland Security contracts of about $45 million to develop the anti-missile systems for airliners. Both already sell anti-missile systems for military aircraft. BAE will begin testing its airliner system on an out-of-service American Airlines Boeing 767 in early September, USA Today reported on July 18.

The system fits inside a pod that bolts to the bottom of a jet and is equipped with sensors that can detect a shoulder-fired missile. A swiveling turret would then fire a laser beam that could confound the sensitive heat-seeking components of the missile, the newspaper said.

However, the Bush administration, in contrast to its previous eagerness to throw scores of billions of dollars at a time to fund other, far more speculative programs of ballistic missile defense against threats posed by incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, has also proven highly cautious so far in exploring the possibilities of anti-missile defense for civilian airliners. President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 includes only $110 million to continue development of the systems, but no money to buy them. Yet each laser system unit costs about $1 million.

USA Today noted that about 35 airliners and other non-military planes have been attacked elsewhere by shoulder-fired missiles since the late 1970s, according to an October 2004 report by the Congressional Research Service. The attacks shot down 24 aircraft and killed 500 people.

A RAND Corp. study this year recommended postponing installation of anti-missile systems, the newspaper said. That study has provided ammunition for critics of the laser defense programs because it estimates the cost of equipping all U.S. airliners with such devices would almost double. RAND puts the most likely cost at $11 billion.

However, another study this year by the Cato Institute, a conservative libertarian Washington think tank, pointed out that the cost of one or more successful attacks on U.S. airliners using hand-held missiles within the United States could vastly exceed the most ambitious costs of installing such defenses.

If the coming tests this fall pass muster with Congress, either Northrop Grumman or BAE still look likely to get a huge order for their laser defense systems. Most senators and congressmen are unlikely to want to go on the record for rejecting a system that could so obviously save hundreds, or even thousands, if it appears technologically feasible.

What is more likely is that Congress, stung by so many enormous cost overruns on much-touted high-tech space and ABM programs over the past six years, will insist on much closer and more critical oversight of the civilian airliner laser defense program when it gets up and running. That is a good way to ensure its speedier and cheaper completion.

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