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ARTICLES
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Why Is America's Aviation System Still the Terrorist Target Bull's-Eye?
David Forbes, June 10, 2004
Bombs and Airports
Whether it comes from scientific experts, research institutions, politicians, the military, or members of the media, we cannot escape the fact that the majority of what we fear by way of terrorist attack here continues to be speculation, guesswork, and a fairly unscientific process. We are left with only one truth – uncertainty. Certainty will arrive first in the minds of the terrorist groups who embark upon a mission to attack us.
The only real test of our progress will come when the next terrorist attack, and the next, and the next, reveals what we are truly up against.
Blindness Helping the Enemy
The Ostrich returns with the improving economic recovery.
The portent of an extraordinary deliberate biological disaster thrust upon our environment is so unthinkable, that's what many of us choose to do - avoid thinking about it. Yet we expect others to have the foresight to cover for us.
Fattening Up the Target
Announcements during May 2004 declared that February 2004 Domestic Passenger Traffic was up by 9.3 percent from February 2003. More than 45 million passengers flew on 746,000 domestic flights that month. Forecasts quickly followed of passenger numbers averaging 65 million for each of the three summer months of 2004; and a return to year 2000 levels including international arrivals and departures. (The DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics Office of Airline Information reported 8.9 million departures carrying 610.6 million enplaned revenue passengers in 2000)
Behind the scenes, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) continues to experience chronic staffing and performance difficulties. Faced with rising passenger volumes and increased flight departures - compared with an age in which it did not exist - the TSA is vainly attempting to think and act at a pace faster than the problem of congestion can develop. Reality and some reliable research tells us that we may be stretched to extremes. Just one hoax threat will cause the system to unravel. Meanwhile, a host of aviation vulnerabilities that have received limited if any attention, continue to invite exploitation as terrorist targets of opportunity.
A preparatory episode similar to pre-9/11 is now before us.
This leads us into discussion of the vulnerabilities and to contemplation of that uniquely critical asset of American life, the commercial aviation system, and in particular, the airport. Also known as the sitting duck; the security dinosaur; and the terrorist’s dream; the Bull’s-Eye.
Priorities
A nation mired in debt, and one which customarily lends to others, not the other way around, is vulnerable for a number of reasons not covered here. Our concern is to open up dialogue that will ultimately protect the future of the second most exposed and critical part of the American infrastructure, the commercial aviation system. The primary (exposed and critical) asset is power, i.e. the grid system and all forms of domestic energy supply.
In an earlier website commentary (July 17, 2003 - The True Dimensions - A Visitation with Reality in Transportation) we described the transportation infrastructure of the United States. The statistical picture is staggering when in addition to air travel we examine bus networks, trucking operations, railroads, railroad stations, containers, border crossings, gas and oil pipelines etc. It is tempting to think that our six hundred thousand road and rail bridges, and our five hundred tunnels (for example), are attractive targets that we must protect. We are not suggesting that these are not important; but they do not come anywhere near the appeal of a busy airport that offers very significant economic, psychological and symbolic value to the aggressor. We have to focus on the critical, national lifeblood arteries. That is what the terrorists will be doing.
Walking through and driving around airports, we can easily find invitations to terrorists. These 'security holes' emanate from a single point of failure in the system since 9/11. That single factor is the inability to change. Nothing we have done in our airports has sufficiently reduced our vulnerability. On this topic we return to thoughts about expecting the unexpected.
This Chapter deals with the apparently less sophisticated but extremely popular, now ubiquitous, weapon of choice of the terrorists, the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or Home Made Bomb.
The Underestimated Threat
We know that bomb-making knowledge is obtainable via the Internet. The United States has not experienced a sustained terrorist bombing campaign such as India, Israel, Spain, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, several Latin American and Asian countries, have suffered. Over several decades a great deal of expertise has been developed, and knowledge shared, leading to today's prolific use of IEDs by terrorists.
It was a medical man, not a military, political, law enforcement or terrorism expert who made the relevant point so succinctly in an article [published in the Atlanta-Journal – Constitution May 3, 2004].
Dr. Arthur Kellerman, Professor and Chairman of the Emory University Department of Emergency Medicine wrote under the headline 'Explosives are terrorists' preference'. Pointing out that terrorists 'are far more adept at handling explosives than they are at acquiring and deploying chemical and biological weapons'.
Dr. Kellerman's message was that few acts of terrorism in the world have involved the use of chemical or biological weapons, while In contrast numerous acts have involved mass murder by terrorists using explosives. We believe that that at a minimum we have to work much harder to match the true scale of the explosives threat, from prevention through response.
At the time of writing, information was released about the recruitment, training and deployment of Jose Padilla, and his alleged mission, to seal and blow up twenty apartment buildings simultaneously, using the effects of natural gas.
We have been taking a close look at trends in terrorist attacks. Numbers of bombing incidents worldwide have grown steadily in recent years. The 'success' of terrorists using various IEDs and military explosive methods in Iraq must not be discounted as incidental to war.
Why Airports?
The air travel network is embedded in the American way of life. It delivers time critical service for people and trade. It is faster even allowing for check-in, security screening and baggage collection than road travel for journeys exceeding 400 miles, and has no comparable speed, convenience and comfort surface-transit competition.
If we pause to consider the effects of 9/11, a comparison of the numbers of U.S. airline employees working in 2000 and those employed in 2002, gives a hint of the impact on one major part of the aviation sector. Full-time and part-time employees in 2000 totaled 732,049. In the year 2002, that number had dropped by more than 12%, to 642,797.
Airline Business Magazine, in March of 2004, published an article authored by Dr. Bill Swan, Boeing's Marketing division top economist, in which he estimated the cost to the United States of the attacks of September 11, to be threefold. A loss of $711 Billion due to the 'deeper down cycle' caused by the events; a loss of 0.2% or more each year in GDP growth; and lastly the diversion of funds for security expenditures, away from other 'pleasurable consumption'.
A very large part of the population can relate on a personal level to an airport terrorist incident, readily understanding the implicit threat for innumerable others, including themselves, who either depend upon or want the freedom to use at will, the scheduled air service system.
Close to 640 million passengers climbed on board commercial airplanes for almost 9 million departures during 2000. We have signs that we are building our numbers again, and may even exceed those record totals within four, if not two, years.
The American airport is the common venue for all these passengers, and for a frequently hectic, crowded congregation of other human beings pursuing their work and leisure. From vehicle road, services and parking access, including control of organizational and logistics planning to meet public and operational functionality, the airport has a terrorist target richness seldom seen elsewhere. It is unmatched in impact value in the sense of the triple fear factors of economic, psychological and national vulnerability symbolism. How many citizens – nationwide – would relate personally to an attack against other parts of the infrastructure? We need to reiterate the message. Air travel is different; and Al Qaeda knows it.
- Scheduled air travel in America is the principal and proportionately the only fast, truly networked national mass transit medium
- Scheduled air service is a critical economic conduit for and of the United States
- There is no back-up alternative that would within an effective time frame, restore the country's economy if the air travel system is shut down for more than a few months, or even a few weeks
- The loss of the air travel system could deliver a lethal blow to the hitherto dominant influence of the United States on the global economy
- It is not necessary for passenger aircraft to be attacked in order to instill fear and deter ordinary people from air travel. The airport is close enough.
- The surrounding environment encompassing the American airport, from the outer parking and business support facilities into the security checkpoint prior to reaching the 'sterile' area, is relatively unprotected. Ground access and egress is EASY. Terrorist attention to this is inevitable and has probably already found its way into their planning.
Why Bombs and Airports?
The whole airport infrastructure, not just the departure and aircraft operations area, is the Bull's-Eye. If a number of simultaneous bombings occur in airport terminals, in parking garages, in and around roadways, bus, shuttle and train systems serving airports, the psychological impact – nationwide terror – will be catastrophic.
Why are we working on the assumption that this is not an attractive option for Al Qaeda?
If bombs are simultaneously detonated in six airports, that will be enough to achieve ground stop for months.
If explosions take place within buildings that have not been designed to absorb or dissipate blast shock, the degree of injury, and the numbers of casualties are very much greater than bombings that occur in the street or open areas.
Consider the implications – could these devices be coming to an airport near you, soon?
Indifference Permits Stealth and Terrorism
There are several indicators of the steady – stealthy if you turn a blind eye – growth of the bombing threat that is coming our way. Two of them are particularly powerful and pertinent:
The narcotics trade and the spiraling increase in use of IEDs around the world.
Thousands versus hundreds, of potential aggressors, now share the experience and practiced knowledge gained.
Some Signs of the future from Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
The Second Intifada began in the region after Israeli Prime Minister Sharon entered a mosque in Jerusalem on September 28, 2002. From that time when fighting broke out between the Israelis and Palestinians, through to February 2004, a total of 20,695 terrorist attacks were recorded. A total of 6231 people were injured and 931 were killed.
The pattern of attack mode shows that 4% of dead and injured victims were caught by car bombs. 6% of casualties resulted from 'other' bombs (i.e. not involving a vehicle, and not via suicide carrier). 21% were the victims of shootings. A massive 47% of casualties came about from suicide bombings.
There were 445 attempts at suicide bombings during that period of 39 months, an average of eleven per month. Of these, 315 (more than 70%) were prevented. That means that 130, target delivery rates of 29%, were successfully carried out.
An upward trend of suicide bombings began in June 2003, when suicide attacks reached and stayed in double figures each month. In October of 2003, 22 out of 24 attempts were prevented. Kudos to the Israelis; how long would this prevention rate take for us to achieve?
Although it is unlikely that proportionate numbers of willing suicide bombers can be deployed in the United States, that does not mean they will not try. It probably means they will (a) select strategically sensitive targets,(as opposed to restaurants) and (b) they will seek out better ways of target delivery using methods now being tested and that have not as yet been witnessed on a very large scale. The Madrid train bombings are one intimation of this.
It is noticeable how generalized the Al Qaeda exhortations and target attack discussions are. The leaders of terrorist groups learn from every mission. They have soaked up our reactions to 9/11 and our assumptions about their thoughts have questionable value. We must read between the lines; return again to expecting the unexpected.
We reviewed sixteen days of terrorist incidents, all using explosive devices, in selected watch areas listed by IntelCenter [www.intelcenter.com] spanning April 5, 2004 and April 20 2004.
A total of 36 incidents were reported, fifteen in Iraq. The reader is again reminded that although Iraq was a war zone, these attacks were pure terrorism.
In another chronology of significant terrorist incidents from 2003, January through mid-November, we counted 167 separate attacks. Among the emerging factors we noted:
- In the first calendar year (2003) of Iraqi Freedom, the pattern of car bombings and high casualty rates rapidly established the favorite terrorist method well into 2004.
- Intelligence reporters continue to observe close collaboration between Latin American criminal and terrorist organizations and several Middle East terror groups, trading in narcotics and weapons. Numbers of middle easterners are known to habituate Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Colombia and Mexico are central to the narcotics trade linked with arms dealing. Mexico is regarded as just as closely involved with global terrorism as Colombia, through the prolific trafficking of methamphetamine and connections with California. A drug route is therefore a terrorist route.
- Renewed and very serious concerns about cross border drug smuggling and terrorism have been raised recently about the border with Canada. Nearly 300,000 immigrants are admitted to Canada every year. More than 10,000 reportedly 'disappear' each year, and a generalized (unsafe) assumption is that ethnic communities absorb them. The authorities suspect that an appreciable number are from the criminal/terrorist element.
- On June 1, 2004, in Pakistan fourteen people were killed and 38 injured when a bomb exploded inside a Shiite mosque. This was the fourth terrorist incident in Karachi in a single month. Events in Pakistan are particularly critical due to the nuclear capabilities of that country, and the fact that a senior member of the government earlier this year admitted giving secret nuclear weapons data to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
More about Bombs/IEDs
Let's get down to it.
- Explosive materiel is easy to obtain, whether it is ammonium nitrate, dynamite or even more sophisticated plastic explosive. If you have the money, you can get the explosives. Theft of explosives is still commonplace in the United States, and sloppy management of legitimate stock is part of the problem.
- Bombs are easy to make, and in some cases this may prove addictive.
- Containers and additives that can render the device more lethal are in ready supply, as is the advice on how to formulate and construct them, e.g. in February 2004 the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning, advising the possible use by terrorist of pressure cookers, of various domestic and industrial sizes, in the making of IEDs.
- Bombers are well rehearsed, suggesting they follow disciplined training protocols.
- Bomb makers have increased their (shared) expertise and adopted high technology advances for timers, switches, and detonators.
- The popularity of cellular telephones is one but not the only, remote management and activation device for IEDs. The ability for precision target delivery is increasing daily, as is the potential distance between the bomb courier and the explosive package at the time of detonation.
Airport Security - An Oxymoron?
Representative John Mica recently said that the TSA is comparable with the former centralized Soviet system. So, is it to be dismantled, merged into other DHS agencies, or what?
Meanwhile, with all this argument about inadequate staffing numbers, poor performance and consequential infrastructure protection inertia, the terrorist is getting ever closer, scoping for the Bull's Eye, knowing that we are not ready. How much time do we have?
Trash bins and other hideaways are plentiful in the terminals, on walkways, in restrooms, in restaurants, concession stores, elevators, parking lots, and curbside. They all sit there waiting for the inevitable. Blast mitigation is talked about but little change is made in that direction, yet the technology and the casualty reduction means are with us today. New and very promising developments in blast containment, providing more safety than mitigation, are now on offer, for containers of all kinds, from unit load devices to trash receptacles and much more. Anti-terrorist design knowledge is readily available from around the world, but we spend millions, nay, billions, on inflated contracts for security products and services that often do not deliver.
Building fabric and structures, glazing, freestanding heavy furniture, roofing, roadways, ground transportation and parking areas are overdue for reconfiguration and protection in anticipation of the bombing of America's airports. We must not wait until it happens. But we probably will.
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