the "air" attack - the need for sams

the lights went out last night - somewhere around 22:30. I was just nodding off to sleep and trying to think of how i would open my presentation for the conference I was presenting at this morning. anyway i woke up this morning to hear that the lights had been turned off as a precautionary measure as some aircraft had been spotted over Puttalam ( by the way there is a landing strip in Palavi [thanks to cerno for the link]about 6 km south of Puttalam) - i really didn't give more thought to the matter until i read about the airport being closed down for 45 minutes as a precautionary measure - now this was concerning.

My friend A called me shortly after i gave my presentation and told me how another friend of his had boarded his flight from Dubai and then been told they would not be flying to Colombo. What the airline mean? What are the implications of a carrier like Emirates pulling out or imposing flight only during the day on Colombo? Now this is even more concerning.

My greatest concern however is the solution to the ltte's air threat- surface to air missiles (SAMs). it seems like we can't even learn from the not-so-distant past - 2000/2001 to be precise. surely the defence-types can remember how our troop-carrying aircraft were being swatted out of the sky by sams being shot by the ltte. isn't this what the gosl should be doing? how difficult would be to train our foces in this technology? hell ask the karuna faction how to do it.