The live-fire ground tests and aircraft installations were carried out as part of the Department of Homeland Security's ongoing Counter-MANPADS (C- MANPADS) program. The flight program is evaluating the system's compatibility with daily passenger airline operations and maintenance.
The C-MANPADS program is designed to commercialize proven military technology and gauge its suitability for protecting U.S. commercial aircraft by evaluating its performance, impact on aerodynamic drag, weight, reliability, maintainability, and system cost.
American Airlines has been working with BAE Systems on the C-MANPADS project for the past several years. BAE Systems has conducted flights of its JETEYE system using a non-revenue producing American Boeing 767. JETEYE continues to fly on the 767 and will fly on up to three additional American 767 jetliners in transcontinental revenue service under a $29 million DHS contract awarded in late 2007.
DHS is also working with Northrop Grumman, which is offering a competing airborne C-MANPADS system, called Guardian.
Both BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman conducted live-fire tests of their countermeasure devices late last year at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
The October ground-based tests were part of the third and final phase of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) three-year-old C-MANPADS program aimed at protecting commercial transports from terrorist man-portable missile attack.
The critical tests were designed to show that a civil transport can automatically protect itself from lightweight, shoulder-fired heat seeking missiles. Northrop Grumman's Jack Pledger said the Guardian system "achieved 100 percent of the goals set for the ground-based live fire tests at White Sands."
Also part of Phase III of the C-MANPADS program, Northrop Grumman fabricated and installed its Guardian missile defense systems on nine Federal Express MD-10 aircraft in revenue service. As of late September 2007, more than 9,000 on-aircraft hours for Guardian (5,000 actual flight hours) was achieved. The goal is to complete 12,000 flight hours by March 2008.
According to Pledger, the operational test and evaluation portion of the C-MANPADS program is demonstrating Guardian's reliability and its ability to work on wide-body cargo aircraft. "We are on track to achieve a baseline mean time between failure of 3,000 hours," said Pledger, noting that added fuel burn has been negligible despite installation of a belly pod to hold the 500 pounds of defensive electronics. He said a simple software change would allow the Guardian system to achieve a mean time between failure of 4,000 hours.
"We have been able to collect valuable logistics data while operating Guardian on aircraft in routine commercial service. This data proves that the Guardian system is a viable concept for commercial applications to protect aircraft from today's modern MANPADS threats," he added.
The C-MANPADS project winds down in March with the DHS delivering a report to U.S. lawmakers, and it remains to be seen whether any U.S. jetliner will be get the defensive system.
According to Pledger, lawmakers last year put forward an initiative that would put some type of infrared countermeasures on Civil Air Reserve Fleet (CRAF) commercial transports currently used to ferry military personnel and cargo to Iraq where there have been several MANPADS attacks on commercialtransports. But the initiative remains unfunded.
Pledger would like to see the C-MANPADS effort extended beyond March. He says 16 Guardian systems were fabricated for DHS's C-MANPADS program. He believes they should be installed on an equal number of CRAF aircraft operating into and out of Baghdad, protecting them from ground-launch heat-seeking missiles.
With the investment already made by the Federal Government, the Northrop Grumman executive doesn't want to see the Guardian systems shelved. At a minimum, additional flight hours would be logged, further showing the system's compatibility with commercial transports. Pledger said modification of the sixteen jetliners would cost between $300,000 and $400,000, a modest amount well worth spending.
Air Safety Week, Vol. 22, No. 3
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