The National Review
April 2, 2002,
Security Games
By John R. Lott Jr.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-lott040202.asp
When are we going to get real about security?
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has based airline security on three policies: improved screening, air marshals, and strengthened cockpit doors. While all are helpful, no one can ignore the evidence from the last couple of weeks that all three policies are simply not enough. If the administration is going to be serious about keeping terrorists out of the cockpit, Mineta and Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge need to being considering something they have long resisted — arming pilots.
Six months after September 11th, the Washington Post reported that there were fewer than 1,000 U.S. Air Marshals, possibly a lot fewer, but no exact number is publicly available. With most marshals also apparently working in pairs, fewer than one percent of the 35,000 daily commercial flights in the U.S. are being protected.
Increasing the number of marshals is also proving surprisingly difficult because of the reportedly extremely high attrition rate. Flying back-and-forth across the country is simply an extremely boring job. Even if these problems are solved, placing marshals on even a third of flights will be very expensive, running around $7 billion per year.
By now everyone realizes that inspections cannot guarantee weapons will be kept off of planes. A Department of Transportation study conducted during the middle of February was released last week. Seventy percent of the knives, 60 percent of simulated explosives, and 30 percent of guns used in the test were successfully smuggled onto planes. Unfortunately, the situation may even be worse than the study indicates because knives can also be made of plastic or ceramics that are much more difficult to detect.
Strengthening cockpit doors is important, but doors can still be blown open. Security can be breached and terrorists may obtain the key or code used to open the door. Boeing has announced that even when the second generation of upgraded doors are installed by next year they will slow down but should not be expected to stop terrorists from entering the cockpit.