Posted on 08/11/2006 11:50:17 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Attention is turning to new detection and scanning technologies, following the foiling of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up passenger aircraft flying from the UK to the US.
According to UK security officials, the alleged plan was thwarted on Thursday after a major intelligence operation in the UK. There were chaotic scenes at UK airports as stringent new security measures – involving hand searches for all passengers and a ban on hand luggage – caused huge delays.
Experts say improved airport scanning that detects explosives as passengers walk through remains a key priority. "I think you really need some form of detection on the spot," says Peter Zimmerman, an expert on terrorism and security at Kings College London, UK. "You always want good intelligence but it doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking for this stuff right now."
X-ray machines are widely used in airports to search luggage for signs of explosive equipment such as detonators. But such devices can be hidden inside electronic equipment, so chemical analysis is also often performed at checkpoints.
This involves taking a swab from a laptop or bag and placing this into a device that heats up the sample and performs a spectrographic analysis of the vapours. The machine searches for traces of nitrogen, as this is found in the majority of explosives. Sniffer dogs can also pick up the telltale smell on baggage. But neither of these methods can routinely monitor all passengers and baggage.
Some newer forms of X-ray machine, such as the Z Back Scatter developed by US company AS&E, can detect specific compounds by measuring reflected X-ray photons. The X-ray scattering effect can reveal materials composed of low-atomic-number elements – as explosives are – such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen.
But the alleged terror plot may highlight the need for even more sophisticated scanning technologies, as according to US security officials it involved liquid explosives, perhaps designed to evade current security checks. Paul Wilkinson, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Fife, UK, told New Scientist that terrorists are increasingly diversifying away from nitrogenous explosives.
Clifford Jones, an explosives expert at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, says it would be impossible to perform a careful chemical analysis of every bottle of liquid carried onto a plane.
But he suggests simply banning non water-based liquids and having a simple dip test to pick these out. "It seems to me that the way forward might not be to analyse every bottle," he told New Scientist. "Universal indicator paper could be sufficient."
Even more advanced scanning equipment exists, but is not yet widely employed as it remains expensive, bulky and time-consuming to use.
For example, US company General Electric has created a walk-through device called the GE Ion Track that can sense the molecular signature of different explosives. It can identify specific molecules by measuring how fast they move in an electric field, within a sample chamber. However, it takes about 12 seconds for a person to pass through the device, meaning it may not be suitable for rapid security scanning.
Another more sophisticated detection method is scanning with terahertz waves, which lie between microwaves and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum.
Measuring how these waves are absorbed and reflected provides a non-harmful way to scan people for weapons, explosives and drugs as the reflected signal reveals characteristic spectral signatures. TeraView and Smiths Detection, two companies based in the UK, have developed a small terahertz scanner that can be used to screen passengers as they pass by.
But this technology also has its limitations. A study published in July 2005 suggested that a network of at least 150 terahertz scanners would be needed to cover a 500-metre-square area, in order to provide a 10-second warning of a suicide bomber (see Suicide bombers not easily foiled by technology).
Solution= make everyone with an Arabic or Muslim name go through a GE Ion Track.
Why even bother with detection if we could organize premature detonations instead? Say, EMP "pingers" could fry electronics and drive a spike - and detonate - a bomb with electrical detonator. For shock-sensitive materials like acetone peroxide a serious ultrasonic field could do the same.
Subject each passenger & bag to a quick slight shock. If they blow up, they're the bad guys.
"Solution= make everyone with an Arabic or Muslim name go through a GE Ion Track."
Pasty white boys have turned to islamo facism too though.
Taliban John and that other fellow in the news recently are examples.
Detection methods will get better, where there is demand, there will be solutions.
I am SO GD tired of these 10,000-to-1 exceptions being used as rebuttals.
It's not a rebuttal. It's a fact.
We have to be able to detect ANY bombers.
It only takes one.
YES, I agree, middle eastern males are HIGH profile canidates to suspect. But you dont think they know that????? They will most certainly look to recruit people who do not look middle eastern. And our country has plenty of nutters that are prime canidates for brainwashing by islamo facists.
"Rapid security scanning"??? Sheesh! It takes more than 12 seconds to unlace my boots.
Just let the crowd muddle through, one at a time on their way to take their shoes off...
On right side, a "strict" aisle: here, boarders pass through multiple x-rays, MRI, barking dogs, lecherous old men wearing latex gloves, and lastly members of the NYFD in wife-beaters, holding heavy lead pipes...
On left side, an express aisle: 15-foot long, wall-to-wall, 3-inch deep depression in floor. Thousands of copies of the Koran fill this shallow walkway depression.
Same thing for customs, court-houses, and welfare offices. And DMV. And Wal-Mart
Budget negligible, no unreliable technology, immediately implementable, elevates "seperation of church and state" to unheard-of levels...
I like the way you think...
You too.
When the "Taliban Johnnies" actually constitute a significant threat, get back to me. Until then, the YMMs need to be screened - not Gatorade and ChapStik.
X-rays - pfffttt!
Why not use current tech like:
Solid state junction Fast Neutron SPECTROMETERS
Glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GD-OES)
X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF)
Neutron Scanners
Gamma ray scanners
Tomographic Gamma ray backscatter
and more.
These *will* fog your film tho.......
"When the "Taliban Johnnies" actually constitute a significant threat, get back to me."
Or Timothy McVieghs?
Or in 1987....
David A Burke murdered the flight crew in flight....
"While the aircraft was cruising at 22,000 feet over the central California coast, the cockpit crew heard two shots in the passenger cabin and radioed a frantic message to Oakland air traffic controllers: “There’s gunfire aboard!” Moments later, the plane entered a high-speed nosedive and smashed onto a cattle ranch approximately 15 miles southwest of Paso Robles and near the small coastal town of Cayucos."
The entire public can be a threat. It just takes one.
And an innocent can be used as a mule to carry the explosives unknowingly.
RAE Systems in San Jose, CA.
They manufacture numerous radionuclide detectors. Something I think the government should be spending more time researching and aquiring.
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