Posted on 08/27/2006 6:18:14 AM PDT by billorites
Two air marshals kneel on homely blue patterned airplane seats and fire their handguns at their targets 30 feet away.
Wearing jeans and packing semi-automatic pistols, they aim at metal targets, not terrorists looking to kill passengers or bring down a jet airliner.
Nearly every air marshal based in New England will spend about 10 days a year at the Sigarms Academy, taking America's battle against terrorism to New Hampshire's back yard.
Tucked away on 128 acres just down the street from New England Dragway, a different race is taking shape. Trying to keep ahead of plotting terrorists, dozens of federal agencies have sent personnel to train at the academy, as has the Seabrook nuclear power plant.
Air marshals work to maintain and refine their precision firearms shooting skills to counter any threat, recognizing they may come from any angle.
"When you start to talk about terrorism, that's one of those things: you have to have an awareness that the battlefield is right in front of you," said George Harris, the academy's director of training.
And in the case of air marshals, he said: "Literally, the sky's the limit."
Only Friday, an air marshal subdued a passenger on a U.S. Airways jet that had to be diverted -- one of at least seven airplane security incidents reported that same day -- publicly reinforcing its mission to maintain safe flying both domestically and abroad.
"Each air marshal's job is to detect, deter and defeat any acts of violence against passengers, crew or aircraft," said Jack Shea, the special agent in charge for the Boston field office of the Federal Air Marshal Service.
Its numbers are classified and many of the details of their missions secretive. Air marshals are scheduled by computer, which relies on both probabilities and randomness to assign flights.
"You're going to provide higher levels of coverage to flights that would pose a greater threat," Shea said. "The number of air marshals assigned to a particualr flight will vary, taking into account such things as the length of the flight and destination of the aircraft."
The Federal Air Marshal Service saw its role overhauled following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"The threat changed dramatically," Shea said. "Our historical model had been an individual or group seized an aircraft, caused it to fly to some pre-designated location and just negotiated for some cause," Shea said. "Well, all that changed on 9/11. Now, the airplane became the weapon and seizing the aircraft becomes the end in itself."
On Sept. 11, 2001, there were 33 air marshals flying almost exclusively international flights. After that day, "thousands and thousands" of air marshals were hired, he said.
The Boston field office has a mock up of an aircraft cabin with both coach and first-class sections to run training scenarios.
Shea recognizes that firearms skills can diminish over time, yet key for the job.
"We obviously see training as a critical element to our mission," Shea said. "To my knowledge, we devote more time to training than any other law enforcement agency that I know of."
Last year, air marshals assigned to the Boston office each averaged more than 4,000 rounds of firearms training.
With a threatening sky outside promising to deliver more showers, instructors barked orders to the five air marshals at the indoor shooting range Friday.
The shooters had to draw their weapons, fire two shots at a paper target's body and one to the head from seven yards away, reload their weapon and fire another two rounds into the body and another to the head, all in 15 seconds.
At least two men missed the body once out of 24 rounds fired from as far as 25 yards away. The men who weren't perfect complained about their lone errant shots.
Shea said the men were taking a practical pistol course as part of their quarterly certification.
"Accuracy is the key determinant we're pursuing here, precisely because ... you're inside an aircraft, it's confined space to begin with," Shea said. "You have to act decisively, quickly and accurately."
The general public might be concerned that shooting a firearm on an airplane might puncture the aircraft's skin and send the plane spiraling out of control.
"A little ol finger-size hole in the side of the fuselage is going to be irrelevant," Harris said. "This stuff that we see on the movies, you know, where the whole side of the plane blows out doesn't exist" (from bullets).
"The problems you've got to worry about with firearms is electrics and hydraulics and the crew," Harris said. "Now, usually, on a commercial aircraft, there are only two people that know how to fly this bad boy, all right, and they're sitting up front, so you really don't want to be shooting a whole lot toward that front because even though the cockpit door is hardened, there may be other areas that may not be quite as bullet resistant, let's say."
The academy, operated by the Exeter-based weapons manufacturer Sigarms, trains about 3,500 people worldwide yearly, including 1,500 here.
Harris said employees hailing from three quarters of nearly 90 armed federal agencies have cycled through the academy over the past two years.
It reaps more than $1 million in annual revenues from law enforcement and the military, and business overall last year was up 25 percent over 2004, according to Pete Kujawski, vice president of government, military and exports for Sigarms.
Security personnel from the Seabrook nuclear power plant will train this week. In the past, they have re-created their guard stations to simulate potential threats, Kujawski said.
BAE Systems, a defense contractor in Nashua, has visited a couple times this year to "test various pieces of equipment that are used in counter-terrorism," said Kujawski, who couldn't be more specific.
Shea likes the academy's flexibility.
"I think the ability of the Sigarms range to be adapted to a wide variety of tactical pistol courses and training techniques is very significant to us," Shea said.
The academy has two shoothouses, including one permanent one, that provides a mazelike layout of bulletproof halls to train people to root out troublemakers with special ammunition.
Classroom instruction also is available.
The New Hampshire Army National Guard is looking at possibly using the Sigarms Academy for some of its training and practice.
"Of course, it's a question of money," said Brig. Gen. Stephen Burritt, the deputy adjutant general. "We're still evaluating this facility."
Rockingham County Sheriff Dan Linehan has received training from Harris and praised the facility.
"It's state of the art training, the latest techniques and the very best equipment," said Linehan, who can hearing shooting on the range when the window of his nearby office is open.
The academy also has trained between 300 and 500 individual airline employees who paid for the instruction out of their own pockets.
The war on terrorism doesn't resemble other wars with fairly defined battlefields. Today's enemy could be as close as the person sitting next to you on an airplane.
Profile Muslims.
This is too much info. for the public eyes. The less the terrorist know about our security, the better.
I'd prefer that they train with an independent contractor like Gunsite or such.
Does the NYT have all of the Air Marshall's pictures published yet?
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