It’s like R2-D2, but doesn’t fix things

An anti-missile system attached to a FedEx plane took off from Los Angles Tuesday during a test by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The system is designed by Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems to defend civilian passenger planes from shoulder-mounted missile attacks. Yeah, you read that right. It defends American jets from shoulder rockets. Homeland Security sure has some money to burn, don’t they?

DHS gave Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems $45 billion in 2004 to start development on a system that would defend civilian airliners from shoulder-mounted rocket attacks similar to the two that nearly hit an Israeli passenger jet taking off from Mombasa, Kenya in November 2002. According to the Associated Press, military aircraft already have a similar system, but require too much maintenance and misfire too often to be feasible for use on civilian planes.

The result, which has been named “Guardian” by its creators, locks on to approaching rockets and uses a laser invisible to the human eye to disrupt the missile’s guidance system. It’s price tag? $1 million per unit and $365 per flight in maintenance costs.

Besides the fact that very few U.S. airlines are concerned about the possibility of a rocket attack on one of their planes, the cost of the units alone will be too prohibitive for an industry that is already in bad shape. Airlines have been bankrupting themselves left and right in recent years, and cutting costs in response. In addition, the priorities of the modern traveler dictate that the airlines will be bringing back complete in-flight meals and full-length feature films before they decide to mount an underslung paranoia deterrent on each of their jets.

While the missile shots at the Israeli passenger jet in Kenya are still fresh in the DHS’s memory, you also have to take into account that that was in Kenya. If “Lord of War” taught us anything, it’s that the flow of high-powered weapons is quite a bit larger in Africa than in the U.S. You also have to take into account that, as the Associated Press notes, “no passenger plane has ever been downed by a shoulder-fired missile outside of a combat zone.”

So while such a missile protection device might be a warranted defense on airlines destined for turbulent areas, it definitely is not necessary or even financially feasible to implement it on the U.S. domestic airline fleet. A government report last year said that the prototypes for this system had yet to meet DHS reliability requirements and that full implementation could be as far as 20 years away. I can’t help but think that the DHS has thrown away 320 full-ride Rose tuition on something we probably didn’t need in the first place.