A ROW broke out last week over the likely cost of defending civil aircraft against attack by surface-to-air missiles. An influential think tank issued a report on 25 January that claimed fitting passenger planes with laser-based missile defences would be prohibitively expensive. But a major aerospace contractor hit back, saying the information is out of date.
In its report, the California-based RAND Corporation, a public policy analysis group, warned that fitting military laser technology on the US’s 6800 civilian jets would be far too costly, at around $1.6 million per plane. But aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, which is developing such…
