Passenger screening. Intended to prevent another 9/11. But this doesn’t address the new threats to aviation that have evolved over the last 20 years. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
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Think about this: after World War One, the French decided to build a set of complex fortifications specifically intended to prevent what had happened after Germany invaded in 1914.
In 1940, however, the Line wasn’t even a factor when the feared invasion finally arrived. That’s because it was intended to address the past, instead of anticipating future and alternative threats.
Is USA Aviation Security Too Focused On The Past?
The USA can learn a lesson from this bit of history. As far as aviation security goes, the Transportation Security Administration has disturbing similarities to the thinking that produced the Maginot Line. We are repeating history: the intent is on “never again” instead of “not in the future.”
Certainly, the establishment of the Transportation Security Administration was a positive move. But the TSA has been focused on avoiding the physical events that took place twenty four years ago, instead of aggressively understanding the intents of the people who planned it, and developing security strategies accordingly.
America’s aviation security strategy is not focused on future evolution of terrorist activities. What happened that September morning was just one of the options terrorists could have taken – and still could take – to accomplish their goal, which is destroy our way of life. Hijacking airliners from a couple of major airports was the option – just one of many – they decided to use.
The message here is to understand and counter their intent, instead of harden the system to prevent just the one option they chose to terrorize America on 9/11.
Hardened Cockpit Access. It’s Taken Two Decades, And Counting
Here’s an example: Southwest Airlines has put into service the first USA airliner with a secondary barrier to deter unauthorized access to the cockpit. The impetus for this, obviously, is the 9/11 attack, now almost a quarter century in the rearview mirror.
In addition, the TSA has implemented a range of other actions, specifically to stop another set of hijackings.
These are positive in intent. But they illuminate how aviation security itself has been too often sent into the planning weeds by – I will say it – myopic, silo-focused programs that are like putting a few strong links into a very weak chain. The rest of our aviation system has not been given sufficient attention in regard to vulnerability to attack.
Without Professional Accountability, Security Is Impossible
One of the major post-9/11 misfires was failure to assign responsibility, both from the perspective of security strategy and the shortfalls in direction and implementation of aviation security.
The people at the top of the FAA – which on 9/11 was in charge of aviation security – were political appointees who were never held to account, let alone removed from office. Most went on to cushy jobs at the newly formed TSA. That is not a security mindset.
Actually, while the wreckage of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was still smoking, President George W. Bush was praising the FAA for its hard work. Hard work where incompetence and refusal to respond to known threats led to over three thousand lives lost. Very disturbing.
Then we had the insulting press stunts intended to reassure the flying public, such as staging national guard soldiers at the entrance to security check points, a placement that would have not changed anything on 9/11. It was more of the ineffective “image control” thinking that characterized aviation security at that time.
Instead of having these National Guardsmen monitoring airport perimeters and ascertaining weak points, they were stationed to stand like mannequins, holding (hopefully) unloaded automatic weapons that would be disastrous to discharge in a crowded terminal. Political theater, not safety and security.
We could go on. But in any case, it is completely wrong to proclaim that actions taken in regard to aviation security since 9/11 are a “success,” based only on the observation that there have been no such hijack incidents in the last 24 years. But nor were there any in the 24 years before 9/11.
Aviation Security Is More Than Preventing Hijackings
The example of implementation of secondary cockpit barriers is positive and necessary. But it addresses just one of the security failures that led to the hijackings. Great and good: access to the flight deck will be hardened.
But what about the rest of the aviation system? To state it again: most of the thrust of the TSA is in trying to prevent another 9/11, instead of implementing aggressive, anticipative security planning.
Technology and terrorism have evolved in the last two decades. The failure today is in not understanding the intent of terrorism. Hijacking airplanes and knocking down buildings was just the M.O. they chose for that day. Their objective was to destroy and kill, and hijacking airplanes was just one option.
Security Awareness: Replaced By Complacency
Let’s ask a hard question. Do we really have effective, future-focused airport security planning? What about event contingency planning and vulnerability identification in today’s security environment? Events over the last two decades raise questions.
Today, when a threat to an airport terminal is discovered – usually after the fact – the response is to immediately evacuate the affected area. Evacuate where? In most cases, there is no predetermined plan. If an event takes place in Terminal A, what is the plan for the safety of the rest of the airport? There have been several incidents where immediate and uncontrolled evacuation has been the only response.
A few years ago, a man violently blasted his pickup truck onto the sidewalk terminal entrance at Denver International Airport, and ran into the building. A typical example of somebody wanting to inflict mayhem, such as a booby-trapped vehicle, on the facility.
Incredibly, all the airport police did was to calmly walk up and look at the vehicle. They did nothing to secure the area and evacuate people away. (As it turned out, the perpetrator was a deranged man trying to catch a flight. But, surveillance cameras showed him actually getting through the security point itself without being screened.)
New Threats: Are They Being Considered?
The assumption must be that there are bad actors who are intent on attacking our aviation system. Have any airports war-gamed and identified where the facility is vulnerable? The HVAC system? The fuel farm? Response time to a perimeter breach? Location of trash cans in non-sterile areas in regard to their use for dropping explosives? Screening of construction crews? And the list goes on.
Today, there are a range of threats that did not exist in 2001. Threats that the airport industry and TSA are not aggressively considering.
Is any thought given to the threat of drones? It is no big revelation. A creature from the Dark Side could certainly take easy aim at any number of USA airports. Think about the line of airliners waiting for takeoff at LaGuardia at 8AM. We had better believe that terrorists are actively considering any weaknesses in our system. But, are we doing the same?
What we are seeing in the Ukraine should be keeping airport and security planners up at night to work on identification and deterrence of threat levels. How many airports have done any such exploration? Has the TSA considered any regulation or tracking of drone operations? These are no longer just cute toys that can be delivered tomorrow via Amazon Prime.
The conclusion here is that perhaps all drones need to be licensed, and systems immediately developed to detect them. Yes, that would be a major and controversial move, but nobody can today deny the potential alternative threat.
How about emergency access and egress plans? There was a major bombing at Brussels a few years ago, and one of the main failures was a lack of contingency planning to get emergency units to the airport. Did anybody in USA aviation leadership take notice?
Security Prevention Danger: Failure To Think Like A Terrorist
Here’s the point illuminated by the installation of cockpit barriers: it is just one part of the security systems that need to be in place. But it is reactive to something that happened two decades ago.
Aviation security must be proactive and future-focused. It’s called planning, not reacting.
As we sit comfortably behind strategies that are mostly geared to countering a single-event threat two decades ago, we are assured by Homeland Security that our air transportation system is as safe as humanly possible.
That’s what the French thought about the Maginot Line.