TSA considers shifting money from puffers to X-rays

Puffer machines may be going away with the wind, suggests a recent Washington Post report. Officials at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) told the paper that the agency is considering taking $20 million allocated to buying the interesting but struggling technology and instead upgrading traditional X-ray machines and buying new ones. Roll-out of the explosive trace detectors was recently delayed due to concerns about long-term reliability and worries that they were unable to detect liquid explosives. Such explosives are preoccupying planners as of late, and so it is natural that they would look elsewhere for a solution.

Technology does exist to detect liquid explosives (DHS is currently testing ten such devices at a New Mexico laboratory and has received fifty seperate vendor proposals in the past month) but so far no company has been able to provide a solution that is effective and reliable without being unnecessarily time-consuming. Integration is the name of the game here, with the ideal being a system that allows a single pass through of carry-on luggage through a joint X-ray/explosives detection system. Short of that would be a two stage process, much as was being done with the puffer machines, with passengers singled out for extra explosives screening.

Experts say the newer X-ray machines TSA has in mind would not do the job of detecting liquid explosives either. X-rays, of course, can only create images; they cannot detect anything on their own. Security planners nevertheless believe imaging improvments would help screeners better detect bottles and other liquid containers without adding to screening time. “What gives me the capability to find explosives now?” asked TSA chief Kip Hawley. “The answer is X-rays. We’re looking at where we can get the biggest bang for the buck.” No pun intended, we are sure.

Officials said a decision on the reallocation was weeks or months away.

-read more in Del Quentin Wilber’s Washington Post report