Behind The Scenes – Transportation Security Laboratory
The goal at the Transportation Security Laboratory is to always remain at least one step ahead of any methods terrorists may have dreamed up for getting weapons onto a plane and then prevent it from ever happening. Here is another terrific article about some of the men and women quietly working behind the scenes to keep all of us a little safer.
LA Times – In the lab, cooking up bomb detectors
Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the front line in America’s war on terrorism runs through a little-known federal laboratory where engineer Nelson Carey holds what appears to be a bratwurst in a bun.
“This is a Semtex sausage,” said Carey, as he pinched the pink, plastic explosive long favored by terrorist groups.
On his table lies a green Teletubby doll stuffed with C-4 military explosives, a leather sandal with a high-explosive shoe insert, an Entenmann’s cake covered in an explosive compound that looks like white frosting, and other deadly devices Carey and his colleagues have built. None have detonators, so they are safe.
“We let our imaginations go wild,” Carey said. “The types of improvised explosive devices are endless.”
So are possible solutions, at least in theory. That’s where the Transportation Security Laboratory comes in. Scientists here dream up ways an enemy might slip a weapon or a bomb onto a plane, and then try to build defenses to detect or counter the danger.
The work is part cutting-edge science, part Maxwell Smart.
