Flares look great on camera, but Israeli airliners were meant to fight missiles with a laser

In short: after two missiles narrowly missed an Arkia jet in Mombasa in 2002, Israel first protected airliners with a radar-triggered flare system called Flight Guard. Europe objected to firing burning flares over its airports, so Israel chose a laser jammer, MUSIC, that blinds the missile instead of decoying it.

Ask most people how a plane defends itself against a heat-seeking missile and they picture the airshow image: a fan of glowing flares. For military jets that is roughly right. For a passenger plane full of tourists, it turned out to be the wrong answer.

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The reason is not physics. It is the airport below.

The morning that changed the question

On 28 November 2002, as a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, was bombed, two shoulder-launched Strela 2 (SA-7) missiles were fired at an Arkia Boeing 757 taking off from Moi International Airport. Both missed. The plane landed safely in Israel with 271 people on board.

A missile like that is cheap, portable and dangerous exactly where an airliner is slowest: on takeoff and landing. No fighter escort helps there, and neither does a national interception layer. The defense has to fly on the plane itself.

Plan A: Flight Guard and its flares

In September 2003 Israel’s Ministry of Transportation picked Elta Systems to flight-test Flight Guard. It pairs a Doppler radar, which detects an incoming missile, with a dispenser that fires flares burning as hot as engine exhaust. A heat-seeker chases the brighter target and misses the jet. Detection comes first here too, which is why the radar wins the fight long before anything is fired.

The system went onto El Al, Arkia and Israir aircraft flying to high-risk destinations. Then came the backlash. Switzerland said it would ground any aircraft carrying it, and other European regulators raised fire-hazard concerns about pyrotechnics dropping over populated areas near runways.

Plan B: blind the missile instead

Israeli authorities eventually opted for MUSIC, a multi-spectral infrared countermeasure from Elbit Systems that began development in 2008. It uses no flares. A sensor spots the launch, a turret points a laser at the missile’s seeker and floods it with false infrared signals until it loses track.

The laser here does not destroy anything. That is a different job from a laser interceptor burning through a rocket at long range. A jammer needs only enough energy to fool a small sensor for a few seconds.

What this says about defense design

• The threat dictates the location: shoulder-fired missiles are a runway problem, so the fix rides on the aircraft.
• Civil rules shape military technology. A system that works can still be unusable if a foreign airport bans it.
• Decoys run out, jammers don’t. A countermeasure with no magazine changes the math on repeat attacks.
• Protection is layered: intelligence, airport security and onboard systems each cover gaps the others leave.

That last point echoes the principle that the best interceptor is the one you never fire alone, and it applies to a 757 as much as to a missile battery.

The full history of the system, the 2003 tests and the European dispute are documented in the Wikipedia article on Flight Guard.

Next time you board an Israeli airliner headed somewhere risky, look at the underside of the rear fuselage before you climb the stairs. If there is a small pod or turret there, it may be part of a missile defense system, and it is built so passengers never see it work.