On a related note...

December 27, 2001 - Special Report: Aftermath of Terror
Creating Bullets Safe for Use on Planes Is a Tricky Job, but the Demand Exists
By PAULO PRADA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The silver bullet in airline safety may turn out to be a new kind of bullet.

With governments adding air marshals to airplanes to subdue hijackers, and some U.S. pilots asking for permission to carry handguns, ammunition-makers are scurrying to produce an airplane-safe bullet. The ideal: a bullet that could kill an adversary, but not pass through a cockpit door and kill the pilot or wreck electronics.

"In an aircraft with people, hydraulics, pneumatics and electronics, you'd be foolish not to be concerned about a miss or the problem of overpenetration," says Bob Giuda, chairman of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, a Warren, N.H., group that lobbies to arm pilots.

Ammunition makers are focusing on so-called frangible bullets, which disintegrate on impact with the first hard substance they hit, eliminating ricochet and reducing the chance that bullets will pass through a body. Frangible bullets usually consist of a copper cladding packed with ground metals or plastics. They were developed to meet new demands on the firearms industry: ammunition that is less deadly for use by police in urban neighborhoods and less polluting than lead.

Often Inaccurate

But frangibles are often inaccurate, because the ground materials inside tend to clump or break apart, throwing off bullet trajectory and making shots behave unpredictably upon impact. By contrast, a conventional bullet, generally a homogeneous slug of lead, flies straight and hits as a solid mass, although with too much power for the inside of an airplane.

SinterFire Inc., in Kersey, Pa., and Bismuth Cartridge Co., of North Hollywood, Calif., believe they have come up with better alternatives, using such materials as copper, tin and bismuth, a hard and lustrous metal. Packing frangible bullets with more consistently machined powder or crystalline metal reduces the problem of clumping and makes the shots more accurate, they say. The companies believe they could sell millions of these bullets a year.

Manufacturers also have fine-tuned the material to make sure the bullets are powerful enough to kill, but not so powerful that they penetrate metal. Technicians have tested the rounds against a variety of materials, including gelatin globs that model human tissue.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center are testing frangible bullets for their effectiveness in police handguns. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking at new weaponry for use by air marshals, but wouldn't say whether they were examining frangible bullets.

The prospect of midair shootouts makes many aviation experts gun-shy, even though they dismiss the idea that bullet holes could lead to a loss of cabin pressure. Unlike the villain in the James Bond movie "Goldfinger," passengers wouldn't get sucked through a window punctured by a bullet. Aircraft manufacturers say pressurization systems are designed to compensate for leaks, and that pilots are trained to fly the craft safely, even in cases of depressurization.

Insurance Liabilities

Instead, airlines worry about insurance liabilities if an errant bullet kills a passenger. UAL Corp.'s United Airlines backs stun guns and is seeking FAA permission to have pilots and flight attendants carry the weapons. But stun guns may not be potent enough to stop a determined group of hijackers.

In Europe, where air marshals operate on a country-by-country basis, aviation regulators haven't even raised the issue of bullets. There, individual countries have authority over air safety, making coordination on security issues complicated enough without the added controversy of weaponry. Few European airlines are pushing the gun issue either.

"The whole thing is fraught with dangers, from accidental discharge to issues of proper training," says Iain Jack, head of security for British Airways. "We don't want bullets flying around inside an aircraft."

SinterFire says its frangible bullets are more airplane-friendly. Its rounds consist of a baked metal powder that is 90% copper and 10% tin. By pulverizing, compressing and heating the metals, the company says, it avoids the clumps in other frangibles, making the bullets more reliable. "Our bullet can penetrate a bad guy's head, but it won't come out the other side," says Dan Smith, SinterFire's director of technology.

SinterFire works closely with Sigarms Co., a handgun maker in Exeter, N.H., which sells firearms to the FAA. Air marshals work for the FAA and use government-issued weapons. The two companies are discussing a new gun designed specifically for the frangible bullets.

Ken Elliott, president of Bismuth Cartridge, says his company recently developed a bullet made of that metal. Those bullets shatter more easily on contact than lead, because bismuth, a metal slightly heavier than lead, has a brittle, crystalline structure.

Mr. Elliott, already sells bismuth shotgun shells in the U.S., and is the publisher of hunting magazine "Sports Afield." He began investigating new ammunition several years ago, when the Clinton administration began pressing bullet makers to move away from lead, which poisons groundwater and soils.

Most frangible bullets, he realized, were "sintered" -- that is baked, not melted into a single unit. But he cast his bismuth bullets from the molten metal, forming a solid, yet breakable mass. The result, he says, is a truer flight path.

But some pro-gun pilots fear the push toward fragile bullets will produce ammunition that wouldn't stop terrorists. Mr. Giuda, of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, says he would prefer short-range versions of standard bullets, whose lethality is unquestioned, but which would be less likely to blast through cockpit doors.

Write to Paulo Prada at mailto[email protected][email protected]</A>

URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/r...5355504440.djm

Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.