Details are still forthcoming—and some may never be made public—but there are some lessons I think we can confidently draw from the recent foiling of the UK airline plot. While we ought to breathe a sigh of relief and offer our thanks and congratulations to our police and intelligence services, we should also take stock of the situation and use it to our advantage. We dodged a big bullet. This will not be last attempt on us.
First, good fortune played a role, as it always does. The investigation apparently started with a tip. Luck is a bad thing to count on though, and we need to set the conditions where fortune will favor us. The key is maintaining active source networks, encouraging public participation, and sharing intelligence across the board.
Second, surveillance programs work. Let me restate that: SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS WORK. We should be surveilling the hell out of persons of interest, mapping their movements, intercepting their communications and tracking their finances. (They are definitely watching us and taking notes.) Any electronic communications coming in to this country from known or suspected terrorist entities should be screened as a matter of course. Those who say otherwise are dead wrong and are immeasurably harming the country’s defenses.
Third, we need to keep one step ahead of the enemy’s tactics, techniques and procedures. The weapon of choice in this case was a clever set of innocuous materials that could be mixed quickly without gathering attention and detonated with common consumer electronics. It is simple, diabolically brilliant, and completely evades current security screens. (I read elsewhere that this sort improvised liquid explosive also was to have been used in the 1995 Bojinka plot uncovered in the Philippines.) This is the age-old cycle of measures and counter-measures. It not solely a technological process, but a tactical one too; as the SOCom saying goes, “humans are more important than hardware.”
Fourth, maintain vigilance and resolve. The enemy has the will to press on; we need to match his will and beat it. We have the resources, we have the forces, and we have right on our side. We need to muster the will to stay vigilant and maintain complete resolve, despite mistakes, setbacks, lulls, and the enticing but empty words of those who prefer peace at any price.
The real risk is that these liquids they were going to be using were individually completely innocuous. You could put them under an explosive sniffer for hours and get nothing. I don’t know what the long term solution to that sort of threat is — surely they can’t ban all liquids forever.
5th, terrorists will keep going for planes….
surely they can’t ban all liquids forever.
I don’t know why not. They could also ban all carry ons.
…5th, terrorists will keep going for planes….
I think (or maybe it’s just a hope) we’ll soon see a change of targets. The terrorists have an irrational attachment to airplanes, but once taking one down becomes difficult enough, they’ll move on to blowing up movie theaters or pizza parlors. Not a great thought, I admit, but I do think they’ll move on at some point.
Regarding future bomb attacks on aviation, IIRC, the ‘Black Widow’ group in Russia (Checken widows avenging their husbands’ deaths) got their bomb-making material onto planes by inserting it into body cavities. This would take security screening to a whole new level.
It’s time for the west to use aspects of the israeli el al security system.
Interview, profile, question, search , if non-responsive, refund their tickets and refuse them the privilege of flying COMMERCIAL airliners.
But this is all a symptom of the problem.
It is not ww3, it is the final battle of ww2.
think of it, at the end of ww2, germany, italy & japan signed and surrendered. The arab world, never did.
Islamic facists are the bastard childred of hitler, the virus has spread and now needs to be put out.
Well, they go after airplanes for a perfectly rational reason. If you detonate a small explosive in a shop or a restaurant, you kill maybe half a dozen people and do a couple thousand dollars worth of damage. You detonate that exact same explosive on an airplane and you kill a couple hundred and do millions in damage, not including the economic fallout from people refusing to fly.