Ramzi Yousef almost brought down an airliner with liquid explosive concealed in a “half empty contact lens solution”. That's no more than 5 ounces. His placement was luckily off because he actually hid the bomb inside a seat to detonate during the next flight. A suicide bomber placing such a bomb at the exterior of a jet would likely bring it down. Both the underwear bomber and shoe bomber had enough explosives but were luckily too stupid to detonate.
This is why we can't have more than 3 ounces of liquid and have the outline underneath our clothes scanned. However that is a STUPID approach. The question is are they really that dumb or are they truly conditioning people for random searches?
IMO, we need more chemical based detection systems rather than visual searches of everything. Bomb sniffing dogs/machines to check everything entering a plane would keep us more safe than what we have now. The deck should also be completely isolated the entire time. Pilots should have their own toilet and a small door for food. Stopping all the groping and doing these two things would eliminate 99.99% of threats.
The answer to this is that they aren't dumb. Evil yes, but not dumb.
IMO, we need more chemical based detection systems rather than visual searches of everything. Bomb sniffing dogs/machines to check everything entering a plane would keep us more safe than what we have now. The deck should also be completely isolated the entire time. Pilots should have their own toilet and a small door for food. Stopping all the groping and doing these two things would eliminate 99.99% of threats.
Agreed. Allowing the flight crew to arm themselves would also actually enhance security, much more than is being done today, and would cost nothing. The problem with that approach is that it doesn't expand government power or authority, so it was never considered. Everything that has been done has been a federal power grab used to condition the sheep-like majority of the population.