Caygill says: Just for clarity, any "countermeasures" installed on airliners are designed to defend against heat seaking manpads at low altitude, primarily during before/after landing/takeoff phases. They would provide zero protection against radar homing SAMs like the Buk-1m.
Saying that if a missile defense system were fitted to a commercial airliner it would not be effective against a radar guided missile is a statement I question. Consider the facts.
MPADS missiles are a desirable weapon for terrorists and are a potential threat to civil aviation for many obvious reasons. Therefore, it seems logical to equip airliners with anti-MPADS systems, with flares being one way to counter these missiles. However, there are so few commercial airliners fitted with defensive systems that's it's hard to draw any conclusions about them at this point in time. Are they effective? Are they too dangerous? The potential danger associated with flares is of major concern and that is one reason American Airlines has been testing JetEye, an automated system to detect an attacking missile and defeat it using a powerful laser.
What is known is that military aircraft equipped with the capability to eject flares to counter heat-seeking missiles can just as easily dispense chaff, using the same system, in an attempt to counter radar guided missiles. This is nothing new. I first dispensed chaff from a flare dispenser 48 years ago. AirForce-1, which is technically a military aircraft can dispense flares as well as chaff and is also equipped with sophisticated Active Electronic Counter Measures.
Is the time ripe for airliners to be fitted with anti-missile systems and if so, what kind? Certainly a flare dispenser would be loaded with chaff if the radar guided threat were more serious than that from an IR guided missile, but is the radar threat more serious? Should airliners also use active ECM?
I don't claim that these are ALL the civil aircraft shot down with missiles, but a quick search shows 6 were downed by shoulder fired IR missiles (Air Rhodesia Flight 825, Air Rhodesia Flight 827, 3 Transair Georgia airliners on 3 consecutive days, and Lionair Flight 602) killing a total of 285 people.
Three were downed by sophisticated radar guided missiles (KAL-007, Iran Air 665, and MH-17) killing 857 people.
Of the ones downed by MPADS, they were, for the most part, landing or taking off in an active fighting zone and/or carrying military personnel. In one case, the airline was warned it would be shot down if it continued to carry high ranking enemy soldiers. In other words, if you're flying in and out of a war zone on an airliner, expect some risk.
The ones downed by radar missiles, on the other hand, carried no such apparent risk. None of them were flying into or out of an active war zone and it has to be assumed none of the passengers knew they were putting themselves in harm's way.
When it comes to civilian airliners three times as many innocent, unsuspecting people have been killed by sophisticated radar missiles fired by organized military forces as have been killed by shoulder fired missiles operated by irregular forces operating in known combat zones.
Does that mean that anti-radar counter measures should be a higher priority than anti-IR measures? Personally, I think and all IR defense is short-sighted. In any case, a quick look at the history of missile intercepts and civilian airliners does strike me as interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive.