Risk, even in war, reaches levels where action needs to be taken to counter it. Has that point been reached for transport aircraft.
The missile strike on an airliner leaving Baghdad International Airport was not the first such attack on a large transport aircraft by a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile (SAM). There have been many before, most of them in Angola. So why does the world seem surprised when, on 22 November, a DHL Airbus A300B4 freighter climbing out of Baghdad was hit b a SAM?
The answer is that the military cognoscenti are not at all surprised, except perhaps to wonder why it has not happened sooner. Any journalist who has researched and reported on the possibilities of such an attack knew it was not just possible but probable – particularly in a war zone like Baghdad. The world's press has printed acres of copy on the subject since the missile attack on an Arkia Israeli Airlines Boeing 757-300 at Mombasa, Kenya in November last year, when the world woke up to the fact that civil air transport are fair game as far today's terrorists are concerned.
Since 11 September it has been clear that, to a small but dangerous number of people, civilian targets are not off limits. The UK had always wondered, during the days of the Irish Republican Army's worst terrorist excesses, how long would it be before they targeted civil aviation as they did there own town centres. But they did not, except for a half-hearted lobbing of home made mortars over the fence at London Heathrow airport a few years ago.
The DHL flight, however, was not an ordinary airport. It was a regular freight service that carried supplies and mail for the coalition government and force in Iraq. Baghdad is in a war zone, no matter what euphemism President Bush would apply to the state of security in that country. So why was the A300 not fitted with missile countermeasures?
There were 26 recorded missile attacks on fixed-wing air transport aircraft between 1990 and 2000, almost all in war zones, and most were successful. Many of the aircraft were military, others were civil aircraft chartered by the military, but many also carried the United Nations relief supplies. Missiles, however do not distinguish between military and civil transport aircraft. There have probably been many more attacks that have gone unreported because they missed by such a big margin that no-one noticed, so the hit/miss ratio observable in recorded events are almost certainly skewed.
The only comfort the world used to be able to take from the activists or paramilitaries with access to man-portable air defence systems (manpads) is that, until Mombasa, they have refrained from using them outside war zones. But now the behaviour and objectives of some of the groups that have manpads has changed. Ordinary people will, no doubt, continue to cling to the hope that only certain airlines outside war zones might be targeted, and that intelligence will allow services to be withdrawn if the risk of particular destinations rises unacceptably high. The cost-benefit balance of equipping much of the worlds civil air transport fleet with missile countermeasures does not make sense until a low-cost solution – such as US industry has been instructed to seek – becomes available.
There are plenty of live war zones, however, even if the wars are not actually declared. The Horn of Africa region, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Chechnya, and (still) Afghanistan are just some examples – and the North/South Korea threat continues to fester. While coalition force are operating in Iraq, however they can no longer pretend that it is acceptable to operate transport aircraft without missile countermeasures.
This is the modern kind of war: the military cannot get away with creating scorched-earth, highly manned no-go region within a large radius of every airport. And Iraq is merely today's problem. There is already enough actual or potential political instability in the world to make it certain that Iraq will not be the last conflict zone the USA, the UK and other countries will be drawn into.
DHL's European branch – European Air Transport (EAT) – which operated the A300, says its aircraft and crew were insured. Is it going to find the commercial insurance that will enable it to go back there now? EAT was not a part of the US Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF). It will be interesting to see whether the CRAF will the only non-military transport aircraft the USA can now get into Baghdad.
In today's world, the CRAF and reserve transport aircraft in other countries need to be fitted with missile countermeasures.
Source: Flight International