Northrop Grumman [NOC] has completed a multi-year demonstration program of its Guardian Counter-Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) aboard a commercial cargo plane and will now have to wait and see what comes next. Company officials hope that the U.S. civilian airline industry will order the Guardian system to install on their passenger planes to protect the aircraft against shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles fired by terrorists. Northrop Grumman estimates that its system could be purchased, installed on planes, operated for a 20-year lifespan, and disposed of at a total cost of $1 per passenger, or less than $1 million per plane. Another possibility is that the Defense Department might be asked to fund placement of Guardian units on civilian aircraft that it leases for logistics, personnel transport and other missions, says James Pitts, president of Northrop Grumman’s Electronics Systems Sector. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will submit a final report to Congress on how Guardian and JetEye, a competitor system developed by BAE Systems that was also operated on a commercial wide body plane, performed during the operational testing. A ground based Counter-MANPADS system called Vigilant Eagle, which was developed by Raytheon [RTN], is also being looked at by DHS. Vigilant Eagle would be deployed near airports.
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