could blow an airliner out of the sky like flight 17? it has happened more than a dozen times unless history. it turns out just three months ago, israel s defense ministry says it successfully completed testing a system called sky shield, a laser system that protects commercial planes from possible missile attacks. could this be the next security step we need? jim walsh is an expert with m.i.t. security studies program and joins us now from boston. jim, they say they tested this on an a 737 and it worked deflecting a missile somehow. should this program potentially be expanded? i have bad news. this is not the magic wand that s going to solve this problem. this program developed some years ago in response to an attack on israeli civilian aircraft by terrorists using shoulder-launched missiles that were heat seeking missiles.
determine who did the launching. i have a question about the missile itself. is it possible when such a missile is launched, it can aim at one target like a transport plane, then hones into a larger target such as a passenger plane? yes. it s theoretically possible, especially if the planes are flying at similar altitudes and in close proximity to each other. because the missiles known by the code name of sa-11 and sa 13 are heat seeking, they could be targeted in one area and moved over to and automatically moved to the bigger, more heat emanating target. if that s the case, it s rare. there s no indication there were two aircraft in close proximity to each other, at least not at this time. it may be more likely, in fact, the people shooting didn t have the training or didn t have the knowledge of what they were
that is ukraine at the very tip of that red arrow, that is ukraine with belarus above it under the arrow. just as it entered ukrainian airspace the thing somehow disappeared from flightaware. malaysia airlines admits there is some kind of an incident. they don t, don t seem to have some kind of information but from standpoint after commercial pilot, robert, this has got to be unthinkable if in fact somebody is firing heat-seeking or guided missiles at commercial civilian airliners? well, i think one of the things i would be asking right now is, who filed the flight plan for this airplane? if it was malaysian dispatchers and i had been captain on that airplane, i said, no, sorry guys, i m not taking that route. i m not going into a piece of airspace that is that hot. jon: captains have that stupidest thing i ever heard. jon: captains have that
in his back room. surface to air missile launchers, heat-seeking, possibly operational. got in the 90s, now to fight ukrainian jets. little birds, he jokes. and then something else, a ukrainian journalist taken prisoner 30 days ago. she agreed to talk to us, unharmed, but terrified. all the time you think the building will be bombed, she says. and all the time people are waiting for the siege, you re on your knees all night praying. that s how you live. in the night, you pray, and during the day, you try to sleep. the separatist fight gets harder, and they are digging in, the separatists seem to be fracturing. the leader isn t spoken well of
it is not about that. about fight from the right. it s getting hotter all the time. has doing that job become more difficult the more and more, i would assume, it has become more partisan, people are more full of b.s. quite frankly. you know. every show is different. all our producers know our job is is heat seeking. i admit it. go for the heat. fact driven. do both. go for the he. can t make it boring. driven by facts. we don t have a correction page like the new york times. if we get a fact wrong. we are being dishonest and incompa tent. last night i want to an event. i ran into sally quinn. my buddy. i should ask you about the difference between public chris, private chris. private chris is very different from public chris. private chris doesn t commandeer the dinner conversation, he is very shy, he is very quiet. that s true. i think i am more a listener.