I would like to recommend this as required reading.
I meant to not pose this as a question.
At some point the terrorists are going to get one in and bring down a plane. It’s a matter of time. The infiltration method will be convoluted, or it may be ordinary. Either way, security safeguards are going to be so onerous that they will not be implemented.
At that point, we will expect risk of death by terrorist in the same vein as risk by pilot error, control system error, unusual weather event, faulting maintenance etc. We’re not going to shut down this wonderful method of getting around and we have to accept the risk.
However, if security precautions do become onerous enough, this transportation system will die. This is a WOT battle front and as the OP states, we are not fighting as effectively as we can.
You have an average sized room that a rat must cross to get to some “rat chow” at the far end. Our current security system is like a maze that we create to make it harder for the rat to get to his prize. Until one day we realize that the rat has learned the current maze, so we make it more complex and burdensome. A few hours, days, weeks later, we find that, surprise surprise, the rat has figured out how to make it past this maze as well.
The kicker is that not only has the rat figured how to make it through the maze, all the obstacles in place have made it almost impossible for everyone else to make it through the room as well. Unless you are a female rat...in that case the designers of the maze will hand carry the female rat to the prize via a hallway that avoids the maze altogether.
So what is the solution?
I suggest we remove the maze altogether and put a few cats or terriers in the empty room and then release the rat to try to make it to the other side. In this case, private airport security firms, (private firms are easier to sue if they overstep their bounds, than the government), with personnel trained in El-Al style counter terrorist profiling, are the cats and dogs I am referring to.
You will notice that the cats and dogs will pretty much ignore anyone and everything...until a rat tries to make it through the room. In short order it will be snap, snap, shake, shake...and no more rat.
Just my idea/opinion.
As an after though, another poster, in another thread made the following point. When did it become OK for federal employees to touch/search U.S. citizens in a manner that is prohibited to our soldiers when searching captured Taliban?