"Gatwick airport wary of missile attack"

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Gatwick airport wary of missile attack
Agence France Presse


LONDON - Police have been patrolling the farmland surrounding London Gatwick
Airport to combat the threat of a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile
attack, Jane's Police Review reported Wednesday.

Police at Britain's second-biggest airport, to the south of London, have
been figuring out from where man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS)
could could be fired at planes, according to the weekly magazine, part of
the authoritative Jane's Information Group.

Officers have based their patrols on the theory that incoming or outbound
aircraft at 3,000 feet (900 metres) or below could be attacked from within a
10-mile (16-kilometre) radius.

'We have identified likely locations,' Nick Hart, a Sussex Police constable
with Gatwick's aviation security unit, told Jane's Police Review.

'Those locations are searched on a random basis with foot patrols, mobile
patrols and searches. We also have community liaison with the local
population, farmers and plane enthusiasts.'

Gatwick is the busiest single runway airport in the world in terms of
passengers per year.

MANPADS can be obtained for a few thousand dollars and are being used to
attack coalition troops in Afghanistan, with many left over from the Soviet
occupation during the 1980s, Hart said.

'These systems have been used to attack aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Afghans brought down over 250 aircraft during the war with Russia. When
the war was over, they didn't give back the ones they had left,' he said.

'We know that terrorists are trying to buy them,' he added.

'The next step is to actually use it. You don't necessarily have to hit an
aircraft but to attack an aircraft... would potentially cripple the aviation
industry and if they did actually hit an aircraft it would be a catastrophe
and that is what we are trying to prevent.'

The Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre publication said that given the
record of MANPADS against military aircraft, with at least 270 confirmed
kills, 'the threat that such an advanced system poses to much slower civil
aviation is obvious.'

The threat from MANPADS was illustrated in November 2002 with a failed
attack on an Israeli plane departing Kenya's Mombasa airport.

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