Outdated U.S. explosives detection technology

Mike · Apr 25, 2012

There's a ton (or perhaps I should say tonne) of information in the article, and much of it is not about Australia.

Centre for Aviation: Australia leads the way in partly removing LAGs ban, but why is it not happening globally?

Surprisingly, the TSA is still playing catch-up, 10 years after its formation. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report of Jul-2011, of the 2297 million-dollar high-tech explosives detection system (EDS) machines that TSA owns, an undisclosed number were built to detection standards set by the FAA in 1998, three years prior to 9/11. The rest were built to the first detection standards developed by TSA, in 2005. In 2010, TSA revised the detection requirements again, in response to “credible and immediate threats.” It announced that by 2011 it would procure 260 new EDS machines based on the 2010 requirements, to be followed by additional procurements in subsequent years. The interesting fact arising from all this is that apparently there was no revision of such detection standards arising immediately from the projected 2006 LAG attacks.

These machines are used primarily for testing for explosives in hold baggage (which cannot be tampered with once a flight is under way) and they are by all accounts subject to high false alarm rates. This does not bode well though for the implementation of technologies from a foreign country used to counter what is only a perceived threat (LAGs) rather than a very real one (such as an in-hold bomb).
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Lisa Simeone · Apr 25, 2012

These machines are used primarily for testing for explosives in hold baggage (which cannot be tampered with once a flight is under way) and they are by all accounts subject to high false alarm rates.
Click to expand...

I'm shocked, shocked, I say!

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Outdated U.S. explosives detection technology

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Outdated U.S. explosives detection technology

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