"Hijack-proof: Costs, gains of planes that land themselves"

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Hijack-proof: Costs, gains of planes that land themselves
By LARRY SANDLER
The Milwaukee (WI) Journal Sentinel


The technology of smart bombs and unmanned drones could create airliners
that refuse to be hijacked - and that land themselves rather than follow
terrorists' commands, an aviation industry leader says.
 
With those devices in place, "the terrorists could not do what they did
on 9-11," crashing hijacked airliners into key buildings, said John
Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, based in
Arlington, Va.

That technology already exists - if someone is willing to put up the
billions of dollars it would take to outfit the nation's commercial
airline fleet with such equipment, said Douglass, whose association
represents aircraft manufacturers and their suppliers.

U.S. Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.), vice chairman of the House Transportation
Committee, is intrigued by the anti-hijacking technology and says it
eventually could reduce or eliminate the need for air marshals aboard
airliners.

But Tom Quinn, director of the Federal Air Marshal Service, says his
officers still will be needed to protect passengers' lives even if
terrorists can't take control of planes.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks triggered both a major expansion
of the air marshal force and a focus on how technology could prevent
future tragedies.

Part of that research has focused on modifying "refuse to crash" systems
that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration already was
developing to prevent aviation accidents. In those systems, computer
software steers an aircraft away from collisions with buildings,
mountains and other aircraft if the pilot doesn't react.

Just two months after al-Qaida terrorists flew airliners into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, researchers from NASA's Langley Research
Center in Hampton, Va., successfully demonstrated how that technology
could be used to block similar attacks in the future.

The researchers combined the "refuse to crash" software with a
three-dimensional database that was developed to help pilots navigate
and land in limited visibility.

A Boeing 757 equipped with the experimental system flew over a NASA base
in Virginia as the database simulated the Washington, D.C., landscape on
a computer screen, with four landmarks designated as protected areas.

When the aircraft approached one of the simulated protected areas, a
yellow dome appeared over the landmark on the screen, then changed to
red as the 757 got closer, NASA said. If the test pilot didn't steer
away when the dome turned red, the software took over and steered the
plane away.

Technical advances

Military technology could take that system a step further, to land
hijacked planes by autopilot, said Douglass, a retired U.S. Air Force
brigadier general and former assistant Navy secretary for research and
development.

Advanced guidance systems already have been developed to steer smart
bombs to their targets and to control unmanned aircraft, Douglass noted.
One of those drones, the Air Force's long-range Global Hawk, also has a
system that automatically lands the aircraft at the nearest air base if
it loses contact with its controllers, he said.

Building on that technology, engineers could program an airliner's
flight path into an on-board computer and set up a system that would
order the autopilot to take over the controls and land the plane at the
closest airport if it deviated from that flight path by more than a few
degrees, Douglass said.

During a hijacking, "the pilot could hit the button, or that button
could be hit from the ground" by air traffic controllers to activate the
system, Douglass said.

NASA researchers agree the technology exists to create the kind of
system Douglass outlined, "but it's not ready for prime time," said
Kathy Barnstorff, spokeswoman for the Langley center. No study of
automatic-landing technology is under way, she said.

Federal aviation officials also agree the anti-hijacking technology is
feasible, but they have not incorporated it into long-term planning for
the nation's air traffic control system, said Karl Grundmann, spokesman
for the Joint Planning and Development Office, a federal agency mapping
the future of aviation.

Costly option

Feasibility isn't the issue, Douglass said.

"All of this technology could be put into commercial airliners,"
Douglass said. "The failure is not the technology. The failure is the
cost."

With some 6,000 airliners in the U.S. fleet, the cost of installing
anti-hijacking systems in all of them "would be in the billions and
billions of dollars," Douglass said.

Airlines can't afford those systems, Douglass said, but they could argue
that if terrorism persists, the federal government should "provide this
kind of defense for our people, just like we provide missile defense for
our people."

At least one congressman is listening to Douglass. Petri noted the
advantages of the anti-hijacking technology after the Journal Sentinel
reported May 3 that Transportation Security Administration procedures
were exposing the identities of undercover air marshals at Milwaukee's
Mitchell International Airport and other airports nationwide.

Referring to the air marshals and other current security measures, Petri
said: "Doing all this may give someone who is nervous about security a
sense that something is being done about security. It's not clear that
much of it really does a lot about security or is very effective."

By contrast, speeding up development of the anti-hijacking technology
"will give our country a great deal more security," Petri said.

Quinn, the air marshal chief, said he expected the technology would be
developed but did not believe it would lessen the need for armed
plainclothes officers flying on planes.

"If (terrorists) began indiscriminate killing of passengers, regardless
of whether they took the flight deck, who's going to be flying
tomorrow?" Quinn asked. "The flight deck is an aspect (of aviation
security). It's not the only aspect."

That's why air marshals are needed to "detect, deter and defeat"
terrorist threats, Quinn said.

Douglass agreed anti-hijacking technology would not eliminate all
threats to airliners.

In addition to the scenario Quinn mentioned, terrorists could try to
sneak a bomb on board - the technique that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and the problem that current
baggage-screening efforts are designed to prevent. Or they could shoot
down planes with shoulder-fired missiles, an idea that worries security
planners, Douglass said.

Nor is the anti-hijacking technology on track to be developed soon in a
commercially usable form, Douglass and Petri said. Even the technology
that NASA has already demonstrated is far from ready to be installed in
airliners, the agency cautioned.

Other ideas - such as aircraft controls that respond only to the touch
of authorized pilots, not to terrorists - have not proved feasible to
date, NASA said.

But just as World War II and the Cold War sped up technological
progress, the war on terrorism also could accelerate the development of
aviation security technology, Douglass said.


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