Perhaps they are concerned with being able to shoot down a rogue plane. If it has the defense system, they may not be able to protect themselves against whatever the hijacker is planning on doing with it. They may just use the excuse of the malfunction as a nicer way to refuse the planes.

I suspect most EU countries are not terribly concerned over whether they have air traffic with Israel.

The Flight Guard system protects against heat seeking shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles, such as the soviet designed SA-7 and perhaps our Stinger. A UK blogger, Spy Blog, has two concerns about the system. The major concern is the reliability of the decoy flare or flares that the system releases.

Just because the flares allegedly only burn for a couple of seconds, does not mean that they will always ignite on time, in the same way that cluster bomb munitions do not always detonate on impact, but end up becoming anti-personnel land mines.

Will the Home Secretary David Blunkett and Secretary of State for Transport Alistair Darling resign when the thermite flares are triggered accidentally and cause the risk of fire in the heavily built up urban area which surrounds Heathrow airport, or which cause acccidents on the M25, one of the busiest sections of motorway in the world, directly under the Heathrow flightpath ?

The second concern is that the Israeli’s are putting the system into limited use in Europe when it hasn’t been through the Israeli test program.

The article briefly mentions safety concerns over the next generation of protection systems, which would use a laser to blind the heat seeking system.

I have no information on the reliability of the fuses in thermite flares, but I know I wouldn’t want an unexpended device like that landing on my roof.

I have no information on the reliability of the fuses in thermite flares, but I know I wouldn’t want an unexpended device like that landing on my roof.

Question: Does such a device substantially change the risk incurred by commercial and/or military air traffic over your roof?

Question: Does such a device substantially change the risk incurred by commercial and/or military air traffic over your roof?

Probably not.

I had thought about including something in my post about a cost benefit analysis, but didn’t. It would have been something like--Does the likely-hood of saving an aircraft outweigh the risk of dropping potentially incendiary devices on or around an airport?

Whatever the outcome of such an analysis might show, it wouldn’t change what I said.

Wait - assuming the device is only triggered when a missile is approaching the plane, is a thermite flare landing on your roof worse than, say, an entire airliner?

It’s worth a risk analysis, though. A downed airliner would result in, say, a few hundred casualties, bystanders on the ground included. Needless to say, if an airliner is shot down over a heavily populated area, like Zurich’s Kloten or London Heathrow airport, more than a few roofs are likely to be impacted. A flare going off at random wouldn’t likely do nearly as much damage.

How likely is a missile attack on an airplane equipped with countermeasures, how likely are the countermeasures to deploy in error, how likely are any of these to happen in a densely populated area, and how do the probabilities actually play out?

As far as I’m concerned, living right under a flight path is a bad risk, period. I wish I’d kept the link, but a few years ago a roof was damaged by a chunk of frozen shit dropping off a plane. I seem to recall it was in the NYC area, but I could well misremember.

For that matter, all bets are off is there’s also military air traffic in the same area. They’re likely to drop worse than a flare. Where I grew up, a fighter plane quite literally lost a live bomb on a training flight; the pilot didn’t even notice until the ground crew counted the ammo after he landed.

Let’s put this in context.  This is the Swiss we’re talking about.  They are, without exageration, the Earth’s most anal-retentive culture.

Once you understand this, you’ll completely understand their “issue"…

Flares are *messy*.

(and you think i’m kidding?)
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from%5Four%5Fown%5Fcorrespondent/4318029.stm)

Wait - assuming the device is only triggered when a missile is approaching the plane, is a thermite flare landing on your roof worse than, say, an entire airliner?

Of course not, but I still don’t want an un-ignited incendiary up there.

How likely is a missile attack on an airplane equipped with countermeasures, how likely are the countermeasures to deploy in error, how likely are any of these to happen in a densely populated area, and how do the probabilities actually play out?

Minor point, but I believe these systems deploy more than one flare.

This discussion brought to mind the airliner that crashed in Rockaway Beach shortly after 9/11. All 255 people on the airliner died as well as 5 people on the ground. There were also some minor injuries.

Rob, that BBC article on the Swiss is just… I don’t even know how to describe it.  Except that to say, uh…

Wow.
/offtopic

Still, assuming a bad situation where their choice is between a falling flare and a falling airliner, they seem to prefer the airliner.  I think. 

It’s not just about random flares falling onto people’s houses. You have to consider what happens if a flare ignites within the housing because of a malfunction too. So, say there’s some sort of electrical gremlin malfunction - the folks in Tel Aviv aren’t properly maintaining the planes or someone found the batch with the production errors and installed it on the plane - and the flares go off on the plane.

If it’s just one flare then it’s probably no big deal unless the system is near some other critical system, it will burn a hole in the plane and cause some grief if that hole is enough to cause venting in the passenger compartments but we’re talking on approach so that shouldn’t be huge. If that one flare or malfunction sets off a bunch of them though, or just a few in close proximity to each other, then there’s a chance that you won’t just burn up the immediate region of the flare system but you could actually set the aluminum on fire, transfer heat to fuel with inflammatory results, burn through critical control systems, etc.

Furthermore, the Swiss have a point about the risk assessment of “terrorists launching an attack from inside Switzerland”. Who’s gonna do that? Your average Middle Eastern terrorist sticks out like a sore thumb in Switzerland, it doesn’t have Basque or Irish minorities, it doesn’t even have significant repressed African minorities to act as catalysts for an act of terrorism. The single minority I could find that might have a gripe was the Serbo-croatian ethic minorities, who I have a hard time thinking of as particularly interested in shooting down Israeli airliners. One of the other posters pointed out the Swiss maintain a reputation for being anal-retentive risk-adverse sorts, so it follows that it’s a good idea to approach it from the viewpoint of the Swiss.

There’s very little chance of real terrorism being engaged in on the Swiss side, no matter what the Israeli flight approaches are like. The Swiss aren’t under any obligation to make life safer and anally-retentive risk-adverse for anyone but the Swiss, and it’s conceivable that some comedy of errors could mean that Israeli planes fall out fo the sky thanks to their new system. Why add to your hassle? Everyone else flies under the same risk assessment as any other plane, but the Israelis want to be different? If one is going to be anal-retentive and risk-adverse, this means that you’d have to specifically check out each and every Israeli plane for maintenance issues that don’t exist for other planes allowed to land in Switzerland.

I’m not saying the Israelis aren’t justified in their missile defense measures, but I can see the concept of maybe wanting to see a few thousand hours of those things flying around to see what the problems were and if they ever light up the planes like a candle in wet weather before I’d like them running around my stratosphere willy-nilly too.

We have moved in Switzerland. I don’t recall a hygiene inspector being in evidence, but we were contractually required to hire a professional outfit that did a cleaning job that I haven’t seen before or since.

They started by filling the bathtub with some industrial stuff that probably would have taken care of any skeletons found in a closet. They disassembled everything in sight down to spare parts and submersed it in that vile stuff in the tub.

It took a crew more than ten people about six hours to get done. After that, eating soup out of the toilet bowl would have been okay.

MisterMook, I’m not taking sides on this, but the complaint is; ‘the plane has a system on it that might fail and cause a crash?’

Hard to imagine an ElAl plane being poorly maintained.  Maybe their real worry is that other airlines will follow suit and they’ll have American planes with those things on them!

There’s very little chance of real terrorism being engaged in on the Swiss side, no matter what the Israeli flight approaches are like.

Bull. Near the end of our stay in Switzerland, rival drug dealers of indeterminate nationality had firefights in a residential area right next to Zurich’s main railway station. The Swiss arrested them left and right, but ultimately had to send them back on the street, because they couldn’t figure out which country to deport them to.

The only reason that makes it unlikely that a terror attack would be staged from or within Switzerland is that you don’t piss off the people that might shelter your assets.

Drug dealers have different targets for criminal activites and goals in their level of violence that they’ll pursue than terrorists most of the time. You occasionally get drug dealers setting off bombs and holding hostages, but what drug dealer is going to stage an international incident by shooting down a plane? You don’t just pick up the garden-variety police shootouts that way, you start worrying about special forces anti-terrorism units too. And, unlike terror cells that can and do “go underground”, drug dealers and most other financially motivated criminals have to interact with customers. Equating drug dealers with terrorists is just ignorant. They have different motivations, means, and methods. The only real reason to shoot down a plane as a drug dealer is if the police are coming after you in it (in which case you’ve likely watched too many Hollywood movies), or you’ve been taking your own product enough AND gotten a hold of a shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile for some asinine reason.

I stand by my assertion that Switzerland isn’t a key risk country for acts of terrorism. It doesn’t have the indicators or lack of control that might presume as such. I imagine that if I were engaged in terrorism that Switzerland might be a fine country for sitting in a dark room for a few months, but for actual activities you’d want to go someplace more sympathetic and/or visible/politically active.

The Swiss arrested them left and right, but ultimately had to send them back on the street, because they couldn’t figure out which country to deport them to.

That’s interesting, but it still means very little in terms of absolute numbers of sympathetic minority/opposition populations. It’s more interesting that they didn’t keep them arrested until they DID find out where they belonged (which, I believe, is how we do it in the US in most cases), or simply say “screw it” and arrest them for firefights and imprison them. It’s so screwy, in fact, that I have serious doubts as to your version of the facts.

Everyone else flies under the same risk assessment as any other plane, but the Israelis want to be different?

Huh ?
Israeli airliners, most definitely, do fly under a much, much greater threat than probably any other state.

EG: Kenya 2002
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/03/missile.defense/

BTW, it’s also important to remember the animosity of the Swiss govt towards Israel, albeit underlying for most part:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/aspy.8w.html

Back to Flight Guard. Here is some info (with pics) about the integration of the system with the airliner.

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/aircraft/systems/flight_guard/Flight_Guard.htm

The system was developed for the military and seems to be doing the job it was designed for.

MisterMook,

Equating drug dealers with terrorists is just ignorant.

Right back at you. My point wasn’t to equate the two, but to point out that foreign nationals were able to overtly commit criminal acts. This is a lack of control that doesn’t counterindicate more European-looking foreigners pulling off an attack using a highly mobile weapon like a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile. It may or may not be harder to launch a major terrorist attack inside of Switzerland compared to other nations, but I doubt that it couldn’t be done.

I stand by my assertion that Switzerland isn’t a key risk country for acts of terrorism.

That much we agree on, although for different reasons.

I imagine that if I were engaged in terrorism that Switzerland might be a fine country for sitting in a dark room for a few months, but for actual activities you’d want to go someplace more sympathetic and/or visible/politically active.

I would guess that shooting down an El Al plane anywhere in the world would be counted as a success for whatever terrorist succeeds in such an endeavor. Having the aircraft drop onto New York, D.C., or London would be simply a bonus.

It’s so screwy, in fact, that I have serious doubts as to your version of the facts.

Suit yourself. I was there and read the newspapers. If you can read German and can find the archives of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung or the Tagesanzeiger for 1994 or 1995, you should be able to find the relevant articles yourself.

At the time, Zurich had long had a major drug problem, resulting in the most depressing open drug scene I’ve ever had the displeasure to observe. Many, if not all of the dealers were foreigners without proper residence permits, much less work permits. They were picked up in droves and the Swiss wanted to deport them first and foremost. They were frustrated in that desire by the simple expedient of the dealers refusing to disclose their nationality, if any. You can’t very well deport somebody unless you find a country willing or obliged to receive the deportee, can you? My recollection is that since prison space was in short supply, the dealers couldn’t be properly incarcerated - assuming they could have been successfully prosecuted in the first place - and they couldn’t be held indefinitely by the immigration authorities. The end result was that the dealers were held for as long as immigration could, then cut loose again inside of the country. The papers were full of moaning and gnashing of teeth…

After rereading my original statement, there is one bit of ambiguity to resolve. I don’t recall if the articles mentioned that any dealers known to be involved in the firefights were picked up and if so, what happened to them. There was a limited number of these firefights, too, because they were the final straw that prompted authorities to forcibly close the open drug scene right behind Zurich’s railway station and to drive dealers and addicted both deeper underground.

The system was developed for the military and seems to be doing the job it was designed for.

Was it sold to the Swiss air force, too?

My recollection is that since prison space was in short supply, the dealers couldn’t be properly incarcerated - assuming they could have been successfully prosecuted in the first place - and they couldn’t be held indefinitely by the immigration authorities. The end result was that the dealers were held for as long as immigration could, then cut loose again inside of the country. The papers were full of moaning and gnashing of teeth…

Wow… I never realized Switzerland and the US were so much alike.

The FCC frowns on everything from cellular jammers to
“passive” radar gun jammers which are outlawed in the us.
cellphone:
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a092200.html
radar:
http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/laws.html

Jamming is concidered an act of war in many countries.
As luck would have it, they reserve the right to listen in
on what you have to say most of the time.
They also reserve the right to use recording equipment
in almost every venue. As long as they see fit.

So it stands to reason that they would get upset if a given country’s
ability to shoot down aircraft it deemed to be ‘rogue’ was
impeeded in some way. Ya know, in the name of keeping everyone safe.

Piss on ‘passenger safety’ thats just an excuse and isnt at all important.
At a minimum Israel bound airlines would like to stay in buisness.
Planes arent cheap and bad publicity is costly.
The illusion of safety is a marketing gimmick at best.

Was it sold to the Swiss air force, too?

Hmm, good question, but I couldn’t say. I tried a search on Flight Guard foreign military sales, but didn’t find anything about sales to any one else’s military.

Another bit of trivia about this system. The flares were redesigned to be larger than the military version and to be invisible. That last feature was added so that the passenger wouldn’t be upset if the system were to deploy flares.

Piss on ‘passenger safety’ thats just an excuse and isnt at all important.

I haven’t closely followed that story, but in the wake of 9/11, the German government enacted a policy that an airplane under the control of a terrorist could be shot down in case it’s headed somewhere terribly unsafe, like a highrise or a nuclear reactor. Unless I have my cases mixed up, very recently the German Surpreme Court smacked down that policy, to which the Defense Minister replied that if such a scenario would come to pass, he’d have such a plane shot down whether the court agrees with him or not.

I haven’t had the time to dig up and digest the actual ruling, but it sounds like that court is very much concerned with passenger safety, until such time as an airplane ceases to be airborne.

I haven’t closely followed that story, but in the wake of 9/11, the German government enacted a policy that an airplane under the control of a terrorist could be shot down in case it’s headed somewhere terribly unsafe, like a highrise or a nuclear reactor. Unless I have my cases mixed up, very recently the German Surpreme Court smacked down that policy, to which the Defense Minister replied that if such a scenario would come to pass, he’d have such a plane shot down whether the court agrees with him or not.

I haven’t had the time to dig up and digest the actual ruling, but it sounds like that court is very much concerned with passenger safety, until such time as an airplane ceases to be airborne.

Yes, the law was struck down as unconstitutional. Nothing to do with being in the air or not, as far as I know - they simly said that the Grundgesetz forbids weighing one set of lives (the passengers) against another (the possible ground targets). Rubbish in its logical conclusion, as every normal risk assessment (for example in my business, roading design) includes weighing the worth and cost of life (i.e. do I improve the design where it is less likely to cost a life out of a million users, but the safety feature costs a hundred thousand dollars more and may never come into play?).

Nevertheless, it makes no nevermind. I’d like to see the defense minister* who would order such a shooting-down. He’d have to be as brave as crazy, for, after all, the kidnappers might not intend to ram the plane into anything at all (have there been any airplane hijackings since 9/11 at all, I don’t know?).

*Sheesh, who IS our defense minister right now? Since going to New Zealand right around the time the new government came into office, I am somewhat out of the loop.

Franz Josef Jung. Well, don’t know about him.

Anyway, how would he know its heading in any ‘dangerous direction’? Downtown Frankfurt is less than a minute’s flight away from Frankfurt airport, the nuclear plants of Hanau and Biblis with their distinctive skylines are less than 5-10 mintes away. Like at 9/11, interceptors would be way too late unless the hijackers tried to negotiate first.

There’s very little chance of real terrorism being engaged in on the Swiss side, no matter what the Israeli flight approaches are like.

If the Israelis have to get selective about where they can use the defense system, the terrorists can be too. Switzerland is not safer (not by orders of magnitude anyway) than the US or Britain. So I’m for letting them have it, and eventually install it into all planes. Its cheap compare to the possible benefit. Easy risk analysis here. I simply do not consider the flare risk as all that great.

As far as I’m concerned, living right under a flight path is a bad risk, period.

Uh, okay, Elwedd. Lets move, uh, I don’t know exact figures, maybe 20%-30% of the population of all developed states? Airports are close to population centers for a reason, and with wind direction having the effect that it has for flight, we will always have to have multiple approach corridors for any airport.

All said here in this thread, I am very surprised that more SAM attacks on airliners have not happened already. We always read how easy it is to get heat-seeking missiles on the black market, and how porous our borders are. There are no serious fenced-off zones around airports - you could simply use some old truck and shoot down a plane from its back while parking under the approach path. Could even check the tail fin first, to see if its the imperial infidels correct airline. Hey, I know some nice backroads in the Frankfurt area forest. You wouldn’t even have to become a martyr, if you didn’t want to.

Apparently, then, arms control IS working better than we thought.

Jamming is concidered an act of war in many countries.

This is a common mis-understanding.

There are two types of anti-aircraft missiles… Heat-seaking and radar-based.

*One* of the systems deployed in ElAl aircraft defends againt heat-seaking, shoulder-fired missiles.  It does this by releasing -flares- and, for good measure, metalic strips called -chaff-.

A more robust anti-aircraft missile depends upon a landbased radar installation that tracks the target (e.g, aircraft) and transmits the targets locations via telemetry to the missile.  This particular system discussed does not defend againt missiles directed from radar.

So, in the traditional sense, it’s not “jamming” anything.  Decoys do not jam.