Missile Defense for Commercial Jets Set for Testing

The federal government, prompted by fears of future attacks on commercial jetliners while taking off and landing from airports in the United States, is set this spring to test a 29 million dollar project to counter this threat.
The fear is that terrorist organizations may attempt in the future to attack U.S. airliners using shoulder fired missiles, which are available for sale on the world's black markets, in order to cause major loss of American life inexpensively, quickly, and dramatically. According to a government spokesperson describing the system: "it senses the missile launch then does some processing to make sure that its a missile and not something else in the environment and then it responds by shining an infared laser at the missile and causing it to swerve away from the aircraft." It is set for its first tests on some selected U.S. airliners in the spring of 2008. The airline industry is universally opposed to the system due to its expense.