Airliner Security: Laser Missile Defense

A report that American Airlines has installed a laser system that can misdirect surface-to-air (SAM) missiles fired outside airport perimeter is good news.  Congress is to pick a winner, between two models, by next summer.  The devices cost $1 million each, versus a $10,000 average cost for the estimated 150,000 man-portable SAMs.  There are between 7,000 and 8,000 airliners flying in the United States today, so the economics appear prohibitive, at around $8 billion to retrofit the entire domestic fleet.  Guess again.

The planes in service fly an average of three flights daily.  The 22,000 daily flights carry an average of 93 passengers, making for 2.04 million passengers daily.  Multiply by 365 and you get 745 million passengers.  The 2006 world air traffic numbers show 2.13 billion (1.37 billion domestic and 760 million international) passengers, a number that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts will reach 2.75 billion (1.77 billion domestic + 980 million international) passengers in 2011.  Globally, 32 million people are involved in sectors pertaining to commercial aviation, which generates $3.5 trillion annually.

Now, imagine a single shoot-down of a commercial airliner in the United States, leaving a major airport.  Not good for business, one would think.  Business would fall globally, too.  The domestic airline industry alone tallied $160 billion in gross revenues in 2006 (though net was a loss).  So, the cost of retrofitting planes would be fully matched were gross revenues to decline 5 percent after an attack.  There are 23,000 planes in the global commercial fleet.  So, $23 billion would cover all.  America being one-third of the global market, the per-plane cost globally would be the same, amounting to a 5 percent one-time surcharge.

Or we an wait for the first successful hit, and pay a cost that makes a 5 percent one-time surcharge look tiny.  It is also reasonable to fund this as part of our homeland security budget.  National security threats are government's bailiwick, so taxpayers should foot the bill, rather than foisting it off on a cost-strapped industry.  Failure to fund cockpit reinforcement in the 1990s led to the debacle of 9/11.  Do we really need a "SAM 9/11 for air travel?