Planes vulnerable to bombs built on board, ingredients hidden in daily objects: Experts

Planes vulnerable to bombs built on board, ingredients hidden in daily objects: Experts Dublin, Aug. 10 (AP): The next terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft could be carried out by passengers who hide their bomb ingredients in innocent-looking containers for talcum powder, baby formula or medicine bottles and assemble their weapon behind a locked restroom door, security experts warn.

The announcement on Thursday of a foiled terror plot aiming to blow up flights from London to the United States using explosives hidden in hand luggage pointed to a potential new chapter in the battle against airline terrorism: a world of hours-long security checks, visual inspections of prescription drugs, and bans on bringing liquids or laptops on board.

Several bomb-disposal experts and troubleshooters for airline security interviewed by The Associated Press said mobile phones, computers, wrist watches or anything else with a battery should be prohibited from flights.

Perhaps most chillingly, they warn that security staff at airports are not looking for the right things anymore _ and the change in tactics required is likely to overwhelm current security standards.

``That theater we see, of people taking off shoes, is not going to stop a suicide bomber. The terrorists have already sniffed out the weak spots and are adopting new tactics,'' said Irish security analyst Tom Clonan, who noted that security measures usually adapt to the last attack, not the next threat.

He said that a terrorist group will almost certainly try to blow up a plane with a bomb assembled on board unless security measures improved fundamentally.

Anti-terrorist authorities in Britain and the United States declined to describe the bomb design used by terrorists in the foiled plot _ whether they were primarily liquid or, more likely, contained liquids in a more complex ingredient list.

Whatever the case, experts predicted passengers may soon have to change their travel habits radically.

``Every businessman needs to have his laptop on a long-haul flight, and now you won't be able to. Even a battery-operated watch would provide enough power for a detonator. All you need is one shock,'' said Alan Hatcher, managing director of the International School for Security and Explosives Education in Salisbury, England.

Airlines have toyed with the idea of banning innocuous personal-care items from carry-on luggage following previous security scares, only to have the focus switch elsewhere because of the mammoth difficulty of enforcing tougher rules. Thursday's announcement dramatically raises the likelihood that security will come first no matter what the logistical hurdles.

The technology for the kind of liquid or crystallized explosives possibly involved in the thwarted terror plot is not new.

The threat first appeared in January 1995 in the Philippines, when police stumbled upon a suspected al-Qaida plot to target U.S.-bound, long-haul planes with bombs based on nitroglycerine carried on board in containers for contact-lens solution.

At that time, aviation authorities announced plans to ban aerosols, bottled gels and containers of liquids holding more than 30 milliliters on U.S. airliners departing Manila, an idea never properly enforced.

Even then, baby formula was excluded from the limits _ even though, in its powdered form, it could provide a good vehicle for masking crystallized explosives.

A decade later in Belfast, Northern Ireland, an Algerian man was convicted of possessing 25 computer disk drives detailing how to bring down an aircraft using, among other things, crystallized explosives hidden in a container of talcum powder.

During that trial an FBI explosives expert, Donald Sachtleben, testified he had built and successfully detonated three bombs based on the instructions found in the Algerian's home.

Despite this decade-old knowledge, security officials in Dublin and across Europe still permit passengers to carry on a wide range of receptacles without any visual inspection.

And the increasing probability that terrorists will try to strike with explosive components hidden in hand-luggage has been accompanied by a trend among discount airlines to encourage passengers to bring more carry-on baggage. In recent months Europe's market-leading airline, Irish budget carrier Ryanair, has imposed a mandatory charge on all check-in luggage; an Irish competitor, Aer Lingus, has announced plans to follow suit.

``I'm really surprised the Irish aviation authority hasn't stepped in to moderate this rush to hand luggage by airlines,'' said aviation expert Gerry Byrne. ``All our airport security has been geared towards baggage going into the hold. ... It will overwhelm security if the emphasis is suddenly switched to hand baggage.''

A British security expert, Steve Park, said the likely scenario would involve a two- or three-member terror team boarding the same flight, each carrying a different part of the bomb to be made. ``They could combine resources on the plane. That would be perfectly possible on a busy flight,'' he said.

Critical to conventional bombs is a power source to trigger a detonator. Clonan said cell phones could provide an ideal power-timer unit for a bomb.

``In midflight you could go into the toilet, attach the mobile phone to the explosives and, as the plane makes a final approach over a densely populated urban area, you detonate it,'' he said. To puncture an aircraft's fuselage would require an explosive charge ``half the size of a cigarette packet,'' he said.

Hatcher said ``liquid bombs'' were not the most likely explosive. He said it was far more likely that a terrorist cell would try to smuggle on board explosives in crystalline or powder form and to combine it with an acid-based compound.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned Thursday of precisely that threat: ``benign'' materials smuggled on board and mixed to create bomb. He said authorities were analyzing to see how to protect against such a threat.

Hatcher said terrorists might also construct an on-board incendiary bomb based on paraffin or petrol, which if ignited in the mid-Atlantic could destroy an aircraft before it could land.

None of these items, he noted, could be detected by a typical US$5 million (euro4 million) X-ray. Hands-on inspection was the only way to tell if a dark-plastic medicine vial really contains what it says on the label.

``You'll have to carry your prescription and prove to security that the medicine really is what it is. But for 20 million people a year going through Heathrow? How do you do that?'' Hatcher said, foreseeing a future airport arrivals hall with five-hour security checks.

And that scenario, he said, points to a future likely target for terrorists _ detonating bombs in an airport terminal, not on a plane.

``You can carry a bag into the center of an airport with thousands of people around you before you are ever screened. That, too, must change,'' he said

Good point, that was one of the tings I was not going to mention. There are literally thousands of points of access to tap some electrical current in an airplane.

Another method would be to build the battery into the buttons of a coat. I will wildly speculate that they might even figure out how to weave the explosive into a cloth appearing substance and wear it on the airplane, activate it with another substance and then detonate it.

W.

At the same time, it seems odd to still give the passengers in first class metal knives.

No it doesn't seem odd -- who the hell is going to hijack a plane today with a table knife? People need to stop hyperventilating over inconsequentials and irrelevancies and realize that damn near anything can be turned into a lethal weapon and that life is never completely safe.

[Would we be permitted to launch missile strikes in retaliation on any nation who's people took to the streets to cheer if this attempt had been successful?]

Permitted by whom?

The only permission the United States government needs to use our military is the permission of the voters. If the rest of the world disapproves because we choose to take preemptive action against terrorist groups, then all they can do is scream, and if we refuse to listen to it, then it's just irrelevant noise.

Unfortunately, the debate is still going on now among American voters as to whether Jihadists are a nuisance to be prosecuted as criminals on a case by case basis, or a problem on a much larger scale requiring overwhelming military force.

I think it's reasonable to assume that at least 10% of the Muslims in the world are the intolerant zealots and active supporters of the idea that it's virtuous to kill people who don't worship Allah properly, according to their particular vision of holy writ.

100 million Jihadists and their supporters can't be stopped from dragging the world back into the 13th century by arresting them and putting them in jail.

[But, as we try to treat everyone equally in our anti-terrorist efforts, middle-eastern young adult males continue to be the bulk of the threat.]

But in the meantime, our policy is to make sure that for every "Arab looking" person who gets screened we also need to pat down one 96 year old great-grandmother, one blond-haired and blue-eyed woman, one 5 year old Japanese kid and then make sure we check in the diapers of at least one infant for box-cutters. Just so we can assure the PC gods among us that we're not being bigots by unfairly targeting people using racial profiling.

It fairly easy for a small group of highly motivated people with a knowledge of basic physics and good machining skills to learn on the Internet how to make a nuclear weapon which can be concealed within a car.

It's a good thing fissionable materials are difficult to obtain.

Of greater concern to me is conventional explosives which any bozo could put together. Imagine the result of something like the Oklahoma City bomb set off by Tim McVeigh but one built by Jihadists and detonated outside the Superbowl or World Series, for example. Or Mardi Gras, Taste of Chicago, New Years Eve in Times Square, July 4th at the Capital, or any of countless places and occasions where tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans gather.

The tough part about keeping on top of terrorism is that it's not possible to think of all the conceivable things a warped and twisted mind can think of to do to hurt people. Often, it has to happen before you can be aware of it. I'm glad they caught this one.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.