Shot down: no further funding for DHS shoulder-fired missile program.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Technology - Department of Homeland Security

The Obama administration in its 2010 budget has not requested further funding to test a controversial program to protect commercial aircraft from shoulderfired missiles.

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The final operational tests to counter man-portable air defense systems, or manpads, marks the possible end of a six-year, $270 million effort to determine whether there was any "near-term" solution to protect aircraft from being shot out of the sky by these missiles.

Phase III operational tests end this summer, with a report due to Congress by the end of the year.

While the results of the final tests are pending, finger pointing has already begun.

A staffer from the House of Representatives said the Department of Homeland Security erred by settling too quickly on an aircraft-based solution.

"What happened with manpads is that somebody asked the wrong questions. They didn't say 'here's the threat. Someone shooting down a domestic airliner with a shoulder-fired missile. Give me solutions,'" said the staffer at a National Defense Industrial Association DHS science and technology conference.

"They already came with a solution--the military system ... They did not look at an array of options."

The department's science and technology directorate gave contracts to Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems to test theft respective counter-manpads directed infrared counter measure systems (DIRCMs) on commercial airliners. These systems were first developed to protect military aircraft in war zones.

The staffer said other possibilities could have been investigated. Perimeter defense at airports was one proposal. In 2007, the DHS science and technology directorate, under a congressional directive to explore alternatives to aircraft-based systems, launched Project Chloe, which was allegedly named after a character in the television show, 24. The proposal would have mounted DIRCMs on unmanned aerial vehicles circling 65,000 feet above airports.

Jim Tuttle, head of the directorate's explosives division, said the criticism isn't entirely fair.

Congress asked for "near-term" solutions, he told National Defense.

"The only solution that is near term, that is even three or four years, is DIRCM. It took even that long to take the military solution and adapt it to a civilian application. $o we did look at it all," he said.

A perimeter-based defense would take 10 times more money and five times longer, he said. There were individual components of Chloe that were mature enough, but...