Has it come to this???

AN MD-10 cargo jet equipped with an anti-missile system designed to eventually protect passenger aircraft from terrorist attacks took off from Los Angeles International Airport on its maiden commercial flight this week.
The system’s designer, Northrop Grumman, said the FedEx flight marked the start of operational testing and evaluation of the laser system designed to defend against shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles during take-offs and landings.
Adapted from military technology, Guardian is designed to detect a missile launch and then direct a laser to the seeker system on the head of the missile and disrupt its guidance signals. The laser was not visible and was eye-safe, the company said.

“For the first time, we will be able to collect valuable logistics data while operating Guardian on aircraft in routine commercial service,” Robert DelBoca, vice-president and general manager of Northrop Grumman’s defensive systems division, said.

During the test phase, which concludes in March next year, nine MD-10s equipped with the Guardian system will be in commercial service. Katie Lamb-Heinz of Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems said all those aircraft would be freighters.

The ultimate goal is to defend passenger airliners.

No passenger plane has ever been downed by a shoulder-fired missile outside a combat zone.

However, terrorists linked to al-Qa’ida are believed to have fired two SA-7 missiles that narrowly missed an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya, in November 2002.

The first commercial flight with the Guardian system followed 16 months of tests on an MD-11, an MD-10 and a Boeing 747 using simulated launches of shoulder-fired missiles.

Billions of dollars would have to be spent to protect all 6800 commercial US airliners.

Northrop Grumman said that during the 16-month flight test program, a ground-based “electronic missile surrogate” was used to simulate launches and each time Guardian functioned as designed, automatically detecting the simulated launch and mock missile.

“Had the threats been real, an invisible laser beam safe to humans would have disrupted the missile guidance system and protected the aircraft