The revelation in USA Today that DHS is beginning to outfit passenger jets with anti-missile technology has prompted a flood of emails in my in box. I'm republishing what I had to say on the subject of Shoulder Fired Missiles, or SFMs, back in December of 2005.

My opinion hasn't changed. But it's interesting to note how DHS has changed theirs, at least publicly. Here's what DHS spokeswoman Valerie Smith had to say to me on the subject of outfitting passenger planes with anti-SFM technology just two years ago:

"DHS believes the current threat environment — current intelligence information — says that the threat of shoulder-fired missiles is not credible and therefore unlikely." 

Since that interview, there have been no attacks or attempted attacks on commercial airplanes with SFMs. The last known attempt was in Kenya in 2002 when Al Qaeda in East Africa tried to take down a Israeli passenger plane departing from the Mombasa Airport. The missile narrowly missed the aircraft and no one was hurt. (Sixteen people were killed in a near simultaneous attack when suicide bombers hit an Israeli-owned hotel in the town of Mombasa.) So what's changed?

Shoulder-Fired Missiles: Threat or No Threat?
By Annie Jacobsen
Originally published by WomensWallStreet.com
December 18, 2005

In October 2005, Dutch authorities interrupted a plan by terrorists to shoot down an El Al airplane over Amsterdam Schiphol Airport — the 9th busiest airport in the world. Seven suspects were arrested. Coverage of the foiled attack held Dutch television audiences rapt for days. In the U.S. the incident barely made the news.

Several of the men involved in the terror plot were familiar to the Dutch. One of them, 19-year-old Samir Azzouz, is a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent and in April 2005 was acquitted of charges that, among other things, he was plotting terrorist attacks against Dutch landmarks, including Parliament and Schiphol Airport, as well as a nuclear reactor.

Azzouz reportedly left a message for police that outlined his group's plans "to shoot an El Al airplane out of the air," presumably with a shoulder-fired missile. A shoulder-fired missile, or SFM, weighs less than 50 pounds and can fit into a ski bag. The more advanced Soviet- and U.S.-designed SFMs can hit moving targets more than two miles away. While the majority of these weapons (there are 500,000–700,000 in the world) remain under lock and key inside the military facilities of "stable nations," U.S. military analysts estimate that thousands of SFMs are floating around on the black market.

According to a November 2004 Washington Post article, several thousand of these SFMs went missing in Iraq when, after the U.S. invasion, the military neglected to secure weapon depots. "U.S. officials fear that the shoulder-launched missiles were among the items carried off by groups willing to sell them on the black market to terrorist organizations," reported the Post.

Pssst, Wanna Buy an SFM?
In August 2004, the FBI arrested two leaders of an Albany, New York mosque in a plot to sell SFMs. Yassin Aref, the religious leader, or imam, and Mohammed Hoosain, one of the mosque's founders, were charged with "providing material support to terrorism by participating in a conspiracy to help an individual they believed was a terrorist purchase a shoulder-fired missile." The individual making the purchase was working undercover, and no actual missiles changed hands.

In March 2005, FBI agents in New York indicted 18 men in yet another plot to smuggle SFMs into the country. The Christian Science Monitor reported on similar sting operations in Texas, California and New Jersey. Also in March, NBC news reported on the discovery of an al-Qaeda website that had published tutorials on how to smuggle SFMs into the U.S., how to overcome securitymeasures at airports, and how to fire the missiles at commercial airplanes. The al-Qaeda website also contained maps showing the flight paths at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport — the 15th busiest airport in the world — as well as maps of the airport's security perimeters.

In July 2005, Oklahoma City police were called to the Tinker Air Force Base after a businessman working in the adjacent area reported seeing three Middle Eastern men engaged in suspicious activity. The crime report (which mentioned two men, not three) described one man as holding "what appeared to be a large weapon that looked like a shoulder-mounted rocket and was pointing it at the plane."

Some Parts of Government Take the Threat Seriously
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is taking the threat of SFMs seriously -– it just wrapped up five months and $125 million worth of anti-SFM tests in Texas, California and Florida. The technology being tested could ultimately outfit the bellies of U.S.commercial planes with infrared, anti-SFM technology. Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems were the two private corporations hired to examine SFM countermeasures, which are based on existing military technologies (military planes are equipped with anti-SFMs). I called DHS to see how the tests were going.

"Really well," DHS spokeswoman Valerie Smith told me of the current Phase II trials of the three-phase process. Smith explained that the current anti-SFM testing is a result of what is required of DHS by the Homeland Security Act. In other words, Congress is making them do it. "At this time," Smith told me, "DHS believes the current threat environment — current intelligence information — says that the threat of shoulder-fired missiles is not credible and therefore unlikely."

When asked to elaborate on "not credible," Smith explained, "DHS and its federal partners have a layered system of defenses to counter the threat [of SFMs]. FLETC [the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center] training now includes awareness training for all new officers — including a video. Every new officer will now recognize what [an SFM] looks like and what to do if you encounter someone who is about to use one."

Putting a Price Tag on Defending against SFMs
The Department of Defense (DOD) has been examining the threat of SFMs from a financial perspective. DOD recently hired the RAND Corporation to determine the cost of outfitting U.S. commercial fleets (all 6,800 jets) with countermeasures to deal with the threat of SFMs. RAND figures it will cost $11 billion to install a single laser jammer on each of the 6,800 jets. As for the economic burden the U.S. will likely experience in the aftermath of an SFM attack against an American plane, RAND estimates that the operating and support costs of the technology will cost approximately $2.1 billion per year, and that the overall expenditure will reach $40 billion for the first 10 years and $25 billion for each 10 years after that.

What Price Safety?
This billion-dollar, anti-SFM technology is meant to combat terrorists like Azzouz and his colleagues. Azzouz has been a committed terrorist since age 16 when he attempted to travel to Chechnya for jihad. Mohammed Bouyeri, another Dutch and Moroccan national with whom Azzouz has been linked, killed Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker and direct descendant of the artist Vincent van Gogh, in Amsterdam in November 2004. Just before Bouyeri slit van Gogh's throat and used his knife to stick a five-page jihadist manifesto onto the victim's chest, van Gogh was overheard to say, "Don't do it, we can work this out."

So far, however, we haven't been able to work "this" out with Islamic terrorists. In fact, we haven't been able to work out what course of action we're going to take within our government's federal agencies. Congress sees the threat of SFMs as a credible threat but DHS does not: DHS deems the idea of an SFM attack "unlikely." DHS believes that its federal partners — the FBI — can break up plots to sell SFMs to buyers inside the U.S. And if an SFM falls though the dragnet and lands on the shoulder of a terrorist sympathizer in the U.S., DHS believes that the newly trained federal law-enforcement officer will knowexactly what to do when he encounters him. If not, the DOD knows what it will cost to clean up the mess.

As this article was going to press[in December 2005], an incident occurred in Los Angeles. According to my recent conversation with Cathy Viray of the FBI in Los Angeles, in the early morning hours of November 26, an American Airlines captain piloting a plane full of passengers from Los Angeles to the east coast reported seeing a plume of smoke below him. The plane was traveling at an altitude of approximately 10,000–13,000 feet; the plume of smoke was at approximately 6,000 feet. Fox news and radio reports followed, reporting on a possible attempted shoulder-fired missile attack near Los Angeles Airport.

On the news reports, the FBI stated that "all investigative leads were vetted and the results were negative. The plume appeared to have emanated from a bottle rocket or a flare…The incident is still under investigation."

Share This Article