Local conflicts imperil international flights

As reported in 'The Japan News' : Local conflicts imperil international flights 8:06 pm, July 23, 2014 The Associated Press DUBAI (AP)—In Libya, militias armed with shoulder-launched missiles are battling for control of the country’s main airport. In Africa, the entire Sahel region is awash with weapons that include portable air defense systems leftover from the ouster of Moammar Gaddafi. Then there’s Syria’s civil war, in which thousands of soldiers have defected and set up new battalions that have shot down military helicopters and jets. And in Iraq, the Al-Qaida breakaway group that has taken huge swaths of territory seized weapons depots all along the way. The world is pockmarked with volatile hot spots stretching from West Africa to Central Asia—a wide arc where commercial flights and airline passengers could potentially be at risk from ground-based weapons. Although counterterrorism and weapons experts say the skies are largely safe, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 illustrates the dangers inherent in any flight over unstable territory where sophisticated weapons might be available to militants. On Tuesday, those risks were underscored by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which told American airlines they were prohibited from flying to the Tel Aviv airport in Israel for at least 24 hours following the explosion of a rocket fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza in the latest war between Palestinians and the Jewish state. The FAA has also prohibited flights in Libya, northern Ethiopia, North Korea and the eastern Ukraine Crimea region, and prohibited flights below a certain altitude in Iraq and Somalia. The Malaysia Airlines jet was destroyed last week by a sophisticated surface-to-air missile as the plane cruised at an altitude of 10,000 meters above rebel-held battlefields in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people aboard were killed. Fifty to 60 countries around the world possess radar-guided high-altitude missile systems like the one that shot down the Boeing 777, according to John Pike, director of military information website GlobalSecurity.org. A much smaller weapon that poses a more immediate threat are the hundreds of thousands of portable missile systems in circulation called MANPADS, which can strike targets flying as high as 15,000 feet, Pike and others said. High-altitude missiles are much more expensive than MANPADS, much larger and require greater technical expertise. “You can train someone to use a MANPAD in a good afternoon,” said Peter Pham, director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. Countries on the FAA’s prohibited list that likely possess the kind of missile that brought down the Malaysian jet are North Korea, Israel and Ethiopia, Pike said. But those countries have armies that are in control of their arsenal. The FAA has another list of places that it says pose a threat to U.S. aircraft, including Mali, Congo, Kenya, Yemen, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Of those places, Pike said, only Iran, Egypt and Syria possess sophisticated air defense technology, with Libya in question. “The notion that a complex system like this could fall into the hands of irregular forces, who could turn around and start using it, well, the world that doesn’t work that way,” Pike said. “It’s just too complicated.”