Zack Phillips, author of the article on MANPAD countermeasures I blogged about over the weekend emails to note that the State Department does have an initiative geared to locating and destroying MANPADs in the field. Apparently this has been a pretty modest program ($7 million in FY '07) but there's a request out for a big increase to $41 million for FY '08.
Obviously, the devil's in the details here -- does the State Department's program work? -- but on the face of things this is a much smarter area in which to invest money than on R&D for $1 million a pop plane-based countermeasures.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/06/tuesday-manpad-blogging/42775/
