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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
A decision by the White House and a GOP-dominated Congress would leave troop-transport jets vulnerable to missile attack.
Sep 27, 2003 | Even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made headlines this week by announcing that up to 20,000 fresh troops may be called to Iraq, President Bush and members of the congressional leadership were quietly abandoning a plan to protect troop-transport airliners from missile attack by terrorists or Saddam loyalists.
The measure, first advanced by the Pentagon, would have begun an ambitious program to equip the commercial airliners that are used for troop transport with advanced technology to protect them from the shoulder-fired missiles. Confused by disarray in the administration's plans to protect airliners from missile attack, the House of Representatives slashed the original $25 million request to $3 million. Congressional officials say the Bush administration did nothing to win approval of the full measure -- despite recent missile attacks on U.S. military craft flying near the Baghdad airport.
The outcome shocked many in the Defense Department and, critics said, it clearly could leave troops vulnerable. "I am appalled," said one Defense Department official who asked to remain anonymous. "We are setting ourselves up for a fall. We are paying lip-service to force protection and instead are digging a deeper hole in which to bury our head."
The $25 million measure was approved by the U.S. Senate, but slashed to $3 million in the powerful House Appropriations Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, a Florida Republican. The lower sum, part of the proposed $400 billion defense budget for 2004, was approved in negotiations between the two chambers and is all but certain to be in the budget sent for approval to the president.
No president in recent memory has been a fiercer ally of men and women in uniform. "We will not cut corners when it comes to the defense of our great land," Bush said last year. Even Ronald Reagan, one of the most forceful proponents of a strong military ever to inhabit the White House, never donned a flight suit and flew onto the deck of an aircraft carrier aboard a Navy plane. But this week, officials said, the Bush administration offered no support to protect the troop-transport planes.
"The administration never made the case for why it needed the money," said John Scofield, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. "It was never clear what they were going to do with the money." An aide to a Republican senator, who asked to remain anonymous, said the full funding would have been approved if Bush had pressed for it. "If the president says that something is important, he will get the funding from this Congress," the aide said. "All he has to do is ask."
In a series of stories since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Salon has disclosed that the proliferation of shoulder-launched missiles has alarmed airline security officials and many congressional officials. The launchers are small, light and easy to hide, and they are known to be in the hands of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. Late last year, suspected al-Qaida terrorists fired on a charter jet filled with Israeli travelers at Mombassa, Kenya, but the missile narrowly missed its target. Top national security officials began meeting last year to assess and address the risk, and some have suggested it would cost around $15 billion to equip 5,000 U.S. jetliners with anti-missile technology. But to date, critics say, the federal government has done almost nothing to prepare for the possibility -- some call it a probability -- that terrorists will use shoulder-launched missiles against American commercial jetliners, either within or outside the United States.
Contrary to the images portrayed in movies, most combat troops and other military personnel do not cram into the back of military transport planes when deploying around the world. Like the rest of us, they usually fly in commercial jets both within the United States and abroad.
Through the Civilian Reserve Aviation Fleet program, the Defense Department contracts with commercial airlines to provide jets and air crews during times of crisis. In return for participating in the program, airlines are guaranteed peacetime business with the Defense Department. The reserve aviation fleet "forms the majority of the DoD's passenger airlift capability," according to Navy Capt. Stephen Honda, spokesman for the Pentagon unit responsible for airlifting military personnel and equipment. By some estimates, over 90 percent of the military personnel moved by the Defense Department are transported on aircraft operated by CRAF carriers. And like every other commercial airliner in this country, these airliners are completely unprotected from the threat from shoulder-fired missiles.
But military craft flying in and out of Baghdad have been targeted at least three times since May by anti-U.S. forces with shoulder-launched missiles. All of those aircraft likely had sophisticated anti-missile countermeasures, and all of the shots missed their targets. Still, the threat of shoulder-fired missiles remains so great in Iraq that the Baghdad airport has remained closed to all but essential military and aid aircraft. That is the risk facing the planes that would ferry up to 20,000 reserves and National Guard troops to the Iraqi capital if Rumsfeld goes ahead with the call-up.
Pentagon documents show that shoulder-fired missiles are the single greatest killer of military aircraft, accounting for well over 50 percent of all combat losses in recent decades. Additionally, Pentagon documents show that these missiles have successfully hit 41 civilian aircraft and destroyed at least 30 of these. In the process, about 1,000 passengers and crew have been lost. Air Force Gen. John W. Handy, head of the U.S. Transportation Command, recently said that the danger posed by shoulder-fired missiles "is perhaps the greatest threat that we face anywhere in the world, and the proliferation of MANPADS is well documented."
