John Mica: “As my colleagues know, I was going to offer an amendment that would have provided $30 million for research, development…”

“As my colleagues know, I was going to offer an amendment that would have provided $30 million for research, development, and the initial deployment of technology to protect our commercial aircraft from the threat posed by shoulder-fired missiles. A terrorist attempting to attack a commercial aircraft is most likely to use a small portable surface-to-air missile. Unfortunately, there are thousands of these weapons worldwide that are available and obtainable on the black market. At least some 27 nonstate groups have these weapons. But there is military technology to defend against this particular potential threat, and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel) can elaborate on this issue.”