Global Policy Forum

By Tom Zeller

At a series of training seminars held in Bangkok earlier this month, about 5,000 taxi motorcyclists were asked to take a good long look at a golf bag. Inside the bag was a plastic tube, and inside the tube was a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. "If I had not been trained, I would not have known what the missile looked like," a taxi driver told the Bangkok Post. "I have seen them in movies." To many of the world's governments and security experts, however, the threat posed by such missiles is now all too real.

The golf-bag lessons followed reports that six shoulder-fired missiles had been smuggled into Thailand, possibly for a terrorist attack on a world economic summit that was held there last week. American officials secured commitments from the meeting's other attendees to limit international trade in portable missiles, but it is the widespread presence of these weapons on the global black market — and in the hands of stateless enemies — that may one day force hard questions over what to do about them.

"This falls into the category of really tough problems with no good solution," said Charles V. Peña, the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, the libertarian research organization in Washington. That's because the equation is skewed in favor of anyone hoping to wreak havoc by launching a missile at an American plane: the weapons are relatively cheap (low-end models can be had for under $10,000) and plentiful, while potential deterrents, such that exist, are few and incredibly expensive. "It wouldn't even have to hit anything," Mr. Peña said. "Just having it known that a plane was fired on could be catastrophic for the airline industry, and it would have an effect that would ripple through the entire economy."

The exact number of these shoulder-fired missiles — often called Man Portable Air Defense Systems, or Manpads — outside the hands of governments is impossible to know. A steady supply of stolen, traded or illegally purchased missiles moves through the shadow markets of arms dealers, while hundreds of others sit in the arsenals of at least two dozen insurgent and terrorist groups around the globe. Many are leftovers from past wars — like those supplied by the United States to Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation of the 1980's.

After terrorists armed with Manpads fired on an Israeli airliner leaving the airport in Mombasa, Kenya, last November, American officials wanted action. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security began soliciting proposals for military-grade antimissile technologies that might be adapted to the nation's commercial fleet, from flares that could lure heat-seeking missiles away from a jet's engines, to more sophisticated systems that use lasers to jam a rocket's homing device. Stepped-up patrols around airports have also been recommended.

"We take the threat of Manpads extremely seriously and continue to perform vulnerability assessments on our airports," said Adm. James M. Loy, head of the Transportation Security Administration, in Congressional testimony two weeks ago. "I want to emphasize," he added, "that there is no credible evidence that Manpads are in the hands of terrorists in this country."

But experts say it is only a matter of time. "If somebody wants to do it, they're going to do it," said David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the British American Security Information Council, an independent research group in Washington and London. "If you look at the existing black market for all kinds of things — for human trafficking, for drugs — the networks are there. And if you offer a transporter a high enough price, they will get the job done."

If that's the case, then securing the commercial airline industry seems daunting. Many Manpads have a three- to five-mile range, and any rooftop, warehouse window or deserted street corner near urban airports becomes a potential launching site. The costs and logistical difficulties of adequately patrolling such areas would be extremely high. And retrofitting airplanes with antimissile technology would carry a multibillion-dollar price tag that, should the government decide to pay it, would raise questions about protecting other potential targets as well. "Buildings are obviously targets too," Mr. Peña said. "Does the government become responsible for securing every building over, say, 10 stories tall?"

The question highlights how combating terrorism has become something of a hamster wheel. Stamp out weapons of mass destruction and determined terrorists will turn to weapons of lesser destruction. Harden a target and they will aim elsewhere. And as the cost grows, which weapons remain threatening enough to pay for their elimination? Which targets will be worth shielding and which will be sacrificed to chance? "You can only think of maybe a million things that a terrorist might do," Mr. Peña said, "and then you have to ask yourself if you're prepared to pay the costs of dealing with each and every one of them. "It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation."

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