ASSIGNMENT NUMBER 5

Assignment number 5

Assignment number 5

Introduction

Terrorists have long been fascinated with attacking commercial airlines, because they are symbols of what they consider a wide modernization of the Western world. However, besides the theatrical value of downing planes, the airline industry also accounts for a huge part of the American economy. Travel and tourism are now the largest industry in the world of American commercial airlines and related businesses to attract more than $ 150 billion in revenue last year and use about 1.1 million people. Air travel is part of the foundation of American business with the passengers in the year 2000 with more than 600 million trips.

Although it was short, three-day suspension air travel after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a significant impact on the aviation industry, as well as the U.S. economy as a whole, from which she took a year to fully recover. Although a significant amount of money has been invested to ensure the internal security of planes, they are still extremely vulnerable to external attacks from shoulder fired missiles. More correctly known as MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems), these missiles are widely available on the black market and are known to be at the disposal of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Currently, no commercial aircraft in the U.S. are equipped with countermeasures to protect against attack by MANPADS. During the forty-year history of their use, these weapons are alarmingly high probability of kill percentage over 70% when shooting with unprotected aircraft.iii This is not surprising that in dealing with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that "no threat is more serious to aviation "than MANPADS.

The likelihood of such attacks is extremely high, at least 27 terrorist groups that have confirmed or suspected of possession of MANPADS. There was at least a dozen attacks since 1994, targeting commercial aircraft with four planes being shot down, including one in which the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were traveling. With the strengthening of security at airports and the terrorists' frozen obsession with high-profile attacks on planes, the chances of attack by MANPADS to be taken in the near future is extremely high.

Discussion

MANPADS are very popular with terrorists because they are relatively cheap, easily portable and simple to use, and cause great damage. In its basic form, consists of MANPADS missiles are packed into a tube with a head-seekers, the launch of a mechanism known as "gripstock", and the battery. Weigh-in from thirty to forty pounds, they are very mobile and can be easily hidden. Typical missile can be built and launched in as little as 30 seconds for targets flying everywhere to 15.000 feet in the range of three to five miles.VI Journey to the speed of Mach 2, the time between launch and detonation of approximately five seconds, any countermeasures an extremely short window in which to be effective.

Although plant-made shelf-life of such weapons, usually about 22 years, MANPADS as old as 28 have been effectively used ...