In an airplane hangar north of Fort Worth, technicians are preparing to mount a fire-hydrant-shaped device onto the belly of an American Airlines Boeing 767. It is an effort that could soon turn into a more than $10 billion project to install a high-tech missile defense system on the nation's commercial planes.

The Boeing 767 - the same type of plane that terrorists flew into the World Trade Center - is one of three planes that, by the end of this year, will be used to test the infrared laser-based systems designed to find and disable shoulder-fired missiles. The missiles have long been popular among terrorists and rebel groups in war zones around the world; the concern now is that they could become a domestic threat.

So let me get this straight. They're gonna launch test misles at actual comercial airliners while people are flying?! Dude, I'm all for actual simulation testing stuff, but thats insane!!!

Brilliant make work project. Terrorists don't use home made missles they use off the shelf weapons mainly from the US or Russia. So first you spend billions of dollars making shoulder fired missles obsolete, then the military has to turn around and spend several billion more dollars creating new missle systems to defeat the anti-missle system they just created. All the terrorists have to do is steal or buy the new missles (or better yet get the US to give them to them like they did last time). At best you'll make the current generation of shoulder launched anti-aircraft missles obsolete and stop a threat that so far in nothing but hypothetical. I find it hard to believe the same money wouldn't be more effective spent on other counter-terrorism measures.

This is a long over due process, and here's why:

When we (America) bomb the shit out of Iran's nuclear facilities, they will give shoulder fired missiles to Hizballah (the terrorist group), who will then shoot down some of our airlines. Iran will claim they have nothing to do with it, of course, and the fact that the missiles in their inventory were purchased from Pakistan will help their claim of innocence.

When Pakistan needed some cash for their nuclear program, they sold lots of these missiles to Iran. Pakistan originally got the design details from China, who reverse engineered our Stinger missiles that they bought from the Afghans, which we gave to the Afghans to shoot down Soviet gunships and aircraft.

The Afghans promised us to only use the Stingers against the Soviets and to return the unused rockets, but of course, they did not fulfill their promise while we did fulfill ours.

a missile is quite useless on a globalize society, western nations are a blend of different nationalities, we are no longer in 1942 and detention of Japanese or any other is quite impossible. wars are no longer what they were, today wars are a mixture of propaganda, terrorism and the economy. nations are no longer nations but pools of economical interest, this attempt to spend money on military hardware is a simple way for a dishonest conglomerate to pinch taxes from the majority and redistributed to a minority on the name of security. as it is the citizens that pay for all this useless weapons. the citizens will have to wake up and realize that this global scam of terror is nothing more than another scheme to pull the poor deeper into its misery and enlarge the pockets of those that have a lot more than what they need.
alfredo bremont

This is a rather unwise option. Becuase what if the plane was under control by the bad guys. Then wouldnt that also render US defense useless? It seems a little overrated. Why not choose fly routes that are less likely to come in contact with high risk zones? Or maybe another option would be to simply fly at heights that are out of the range of such missiles.

Mr. Alfredo Bremont, congradulations, you made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Perhaps you could explain yourself using some logic, or are you high on drugs?

Perhaps you can explain why defending the lives of hundreds of people is useless?

Also, in regards to your Japanese internment during WWII remark: The Japanese were being pulled from their homes and beaten and killed by mobs when WWII started. As for the Germans in America, it was not happening because they are white people like us and hard to identify, whereas the Japanese stood out. The internment was ALSO a way to protect them from angry mobs who wanted to kill them all. You probably were not aware of that fact. You probably were not aware of how many of them were murdered. Do you feel that allowing them to be murdered is worse than locking them up for a few years?

You guys are having to spend more and more on less and less to protect yourselves from the consequences of your complete disregard for the rest of the world. What scares me most is never before has the worlds most powerful empire had nuclear weapons. I wonder what happens when the American empire collapses as it should and will. Will you kill everyone to keep control of the remaining resources ?

Hey “Mike from (obviously) outside the US”, do me a favor… now that you’ve shared your opinion and didn’t contribute a damn thing to the topic at hand, re-insert your head back into your anus. Unless you are going to provide specific examples instead of making broad generalizations, keep your hate mongering to yourself. I (for one) do not want to sift through your verbal diarrhea when visiting this forum…

MV

errm $20 trillion something a year on defense to protect against surprise attacks. 19 guys with a very small budget, no high tech weapons but very big motivation surprised you ? And your answer - spend more on defense.

Is that specific enough - for someone who made nothing but hateful comments in response ?

You keep looking up - you need to look down - its the low tech thats gonna get you every time. Yeah hand held missiles have been used once or twice on airliners but really not very successfully. I can think of much better ways to spend that money.

Weed killer, box cutters, and of course your weapon of choice plain old hate are much more popular.
Good to see you on the team.

Hey Mike not US, perhaps you can explain how hate is our favorite weapon? Let me guess, Islam has nothing to do with hate, right?

And what is your suggestion to stop the terrorists? Say "we love Islam" and all of us convert? Even though Mohammad slaughtered tens of thousands of people?

Or is the solution to give money to poor people?

Explain how we can fix the problem, since you're so well educated on the subject.

Guest:

While I'll agree that Alfredo Beamont wasn't clear in making his point,
going "druggie witchhunt" is'nt appropriate either. Come on, get out of the
1980's; they sucked.

One of the major reasons, perhaps the salient reason the Japanese were
"interned" was that they were too good at what they did. My Family, Azorean
Portuguese, bore witness to this. The Japanese farmers were superior( and our
standards) were pretty high. They dared to own land in the first generation of
immigrants; this had not been done before. There was alot of envy by many
Americans, most of which didn't own land till 2nd or 3rd generation.

This makes more sense than National security theory or mob mayhem.
Why were they stripped of ALL their land and worldly possetions? ENVY!!!!
The war situation was just a vehicle to dismantle their success. When our
wonderful Japanese American neighbors were taken away, they could only bring
what they could carry. They left us their dog.

So, how does this figure into our dire situation with global terrorism.
Most Americans don't know the history of imperialism in the last cenury.
Study the machinations of the British and US involvement in the Middle East.
Look at the history of the Bush family and Shwartzkopf. We've gerrymeandered
borders and stolen land and generally screwed things up.

Lastly, of all this tough talking"no bargaining with terrorists". Where has it gotten
us? Hezbollah and many Al qeada are trained to RANGER level and beyond.
Yikes! Historically, we haven't done so well against an amorphous foe, especially
when they have many friends in our own government.( and own banks)

A better idea than sitting on your helmet: How bout sorting this matter out.
How about admitting we've SCREWED UP ROYAL and trying to get things back to
somewhat normal.