It is being touted as a cheap and easy way to protect airliners from terrorist attack. High-power microwave weapons installed at airports could protect jets from shoulder-fired missiles without busting the budgets of cash-strapped airlines, says aerospace firm Raytheon.
The US Department of Homeland Security wants to put anti-missile defences on all airliners on domestic flights at a cost, some estimate, of $2 billion per year for the next 20 years. Raytheon Missile Systems based in Tucson, Arizona, says that deploying its ground-based Vigilant Eagle system at the country鈥檚 53 biggest airports would cost just $2.6 billion over the same period and protect as many flights.
Vigilant Eagle uses an airport-wide grid of infrared sensors. If two or more sensors spot the distinctive signature of a shoulder-launched missile, a computer control system computes the missile鈥檚 course and targets it with a microwave beam from a billboard-sized array of transmitters. Raytheon won鈥檛 reveal details, but the microwaves presumably confuse the missile鈥檚 guidance system, and the firm says that tests have shown the system can deflect many weapons of this type. The missiles typically carry less than a kilogram of explosive, and while a deflected missile could cause damage on the ground this pales into insignificance against the devastation that would be caused by the crash of a jetliner full of fuel and people.
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Raytheon, which announced Vigilant Eagle at the Paris air show on 14 June, says that if the system is funded it could be operating at airports within 12 to 18 months.
