Originally Posted by
WillCAD
So, the people who came up with the idea were never able to assemble such a device, but Government scientists, presumable those with a knowledge of chemistry and/or bomb making, were able to to do so in a lab. That doesn't really demonstrate the viability of the plan.
The techniques these idiots were purported to be looking into may indeed be viable methods for creating explosives and detonators in a laboratory environment. But when assessing the viability of the plot, the real question is whether any of them had the requisite knowledge, skills, or experience to create, transport, smuggle, assemble, and detonate such devices in the real world.
More likely, they'd blow themselves to spaghetti sauce while attempting to create the chemicals, or while attempting to transport them. They might also get caught, delayed, or otherwise prevented from making the rendezvous with the others, resulting in an incomplete and useless device.
These days, they'd just smuggle the explosives and detonators in palettes of Deer Park and Coke Zero bound for the local Hudson News.
If a competent, highly capable state’s sponsored actors wanted to place bombs on a plane or onto a series of planes, it’s not technically difficult for all such parties to do so when provided plenty of state resources to do just that. And the “war on liquids” wouldn’t help stop that; instead such “war on liquids” at airport passenger screening checkpoints would be yet another example of creating bigger haystacks in which to lose needles, all while undermining the interdiction of restricted weapons/explosives/incendiarie. Not all “viable” threat vectors are equal or as likely risks as others, and distractions onto “the less ‘viable’” may have adverse consequences. Sure, we could try to get the TSA to try to interdict the smuggling of nuclear bombs by aiming for all such radioactive components at all TSA passenger screening checkpoints — since nuclear bombs are a “viable” threat to planes and more — but that would be akin to the Secret Service trying to protect the President from rabid bat bites instead of trying to better protect the President from guns.