Was there an inciting incident to induce FedEx to head in this direction?
Some interesting background, the A321-200 is kind of an older passenger plane and part of aging out is there's a big push to convert and sell as freighter and Fedex bought a couple dozen.
Generally the big push to sell the A321 as a freighter is to use it for long distance line haul service so this is going between Shenzhen and some customs clearing warehouse in the USA or central hub. So this is international every trip and not dropping at your local field to do local delivery. So they're kind of implying anticipation of unrest in either Shenzhen or NYC, not just some random farm community in Canada or whatever.
There are certain implications in relying on IR for missile protection; the simplest and most foolproof way to protect against short range IR missiles is to control the land for a couple miles around in every direction aka build a giant airport in the rural middle of nowhere and surround it with a fence and short range can't hit. This jammer is only useful against a threat where there's an urban built up environment around the airport. Its to protect against a threat when landing at O'Hare not when landing at that airport in Denver that is (used to be?) 50 miles out of town. So they're installing this in expectation of civil unrest generally out east in the big urban cities, not out west, at least in the USA. So that's interesting. Of course with covid, everyone who can flee the big cities already has or is trying to, so that has implications also.
Uh, why would FedEx not fly other international routes, e.g. to the Middle East?
>. This jammer is only useful against a threat where there's an urban built up environment around the airport.
No, the attempted downing of the DHL A-300 starting from Baghdad using a manpads was done from outside the city. The plane was at 2400m already.
Unlikely. There are other places where international shipping currently happens that already are experiencing unrest, and planes are already being shot at: eastern Europe, north Africa, the middle east.
That's still not enough to have missiles fired at you, IMO.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
I believe fedex also overflies many territories that might be hostile to US interests. I believe they continue to overfly Belarus, after most US/EU passenger aircraft have stopped.
Most manpads don't pose a threat at reasonable cruise altitude. They're more of a takeoff/landing threat. There's a minimum warhead size to do the job and a minimum fuel required to get it to a given altitude. Anything that can reach an airliner at a typical cruising altitude is going to be vehicle mounted for the foreseeable future.
> On October 16, 2019, FedEx applied for a supplemental type certificate to install a laser-based missile-defense system
This was the only airliner shot down in the 10 years prior, it has to be the incident that inspired this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...