AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

Low Cost Cruise Missiles & Anti-Missile Technology

A couple news events are intersecting in an interesting way.

The Bush Administration wants to put anti-missile countermeasures on all commercial aircraft. This will cost billions of dollars.

A guy in New Zealand, Bruce Simpson, is putting together a low-cost cruise missile just to show that it can be done.

http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml

As it stands today, the threat to commercial airliners isn't cruise missiles. It is shoulder-mounted heat-seeking SAMS. Simpson's conjecture is that the trend in technology is to reduce component costs that would make cruise missile technology accessible to the do it yourselfer.

The primary technologies are powerful, compact off-the-shelf jet engines, or easily fabricated pulse-jet engines, GPS systems that can be modified for navigation purposes, and computers and sensors to put it all together.

This means in practice that Terrorists can put together in a garage the equivalent to a V-1 buzz bomb, except more accurate. They can put together a bomb that can fly a hundred miles or more and land within 30 feet of its target. Who needs to steal an airplane? Who needs to blow one up with a cruise missile.

Further, if you want to blow up an airplane, this technology is obviously adaptable to the purpose and can defeat the countermeasures envisioned. If the enemy puts in thermal countermeasures to defeat heat-seeking missiles, then the smart terrorist puts in a $2.00 radar chip, or in the alternative, programs an optical recognition guidance system.

Once the countermeasure is in place, it is a fixed target and easily evaded. It is the general nature of terrorism to go for the weak link. For this reason preventative defenses against terrorism are rarely cost-effective.