No more speculation than a FAM would respond better. I personally think I would respond better than a FAM since I have no one to answer to. How many FAM's have killed a man? All the range training in the world can't help you there. And I had better be right since a very few percentage of flights in the world have FAM's.

As for how Europe is reacting better to post-9/11, see here...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=353371

The only reason they worked is because people cooperated with terrorists and pilots opened the cockpit doors. Broken wine bottles/glasses would have worked equally as well, as would have martial arts. Now, no one will cooperate with terrorists and the cockpit door will remain closed. Ergo, the continued Great Sharp and Pointy Object Search is an utter waste of time and resources.

There have still been no terrorists arrested because they were carrying guns.

Every dollar wasted on the "avoidance" of things that pose very little actual risk is a dollar that could have been spent providing real security.

Well, his data is pretty instructive to me, seeing how it was adapted by the military itself and training regimens adpoted across the board (pop-up targets, stress training, silhoutte targets, etc) in military and LE circles and the results speak for themselves.

I also base my argument on other events (Russian school incident, for incidence) where they outcome is equally pre-ordained (ie-the hostages are pretty sure they will die) and still do nothing. My argument is also based upon a decade and a half of training, observation and work in the field of human violence, having seen the elephant myself.

Of course my argument is much more "quantitative and defendable" than yours, in that yours has happened only one time in recent history and we have several incidents where they did not fight back.

I do hope I am wrong, but the evidence to date does not give me hope.

Hi Bart,

What do you mean by "handled discreetly in private screening"? Do you envision all of these women having to strip to their undergarments in the presence of screeners? What about billowy skirts? Should women have to remove those too? Why exactly does the TSA make any distinction between outer garments and regular garments? I have plenty of outer garments which are tightly fitted and plenty of regular garments that are blousy, billowy, et cetera and could conceal large volumes of material. It seems a distinction without a difference.

When you suggest investigating "bulges" that seems to imply we will have to wear form-fitting clothes exclusively at a checkpoint, because that's the only way you're going to notice bulges. Most people dress specifically to hide their personal bulges.

Why is ETD screening of bodies impractical? I thought puff-of-air detectors qualified as ETD screening of bodies?

The FAMs have a ton of training that you do not have and the overwhelming majority have years of experience in the field and with violence. What training have you had? When was the last time someone tried to kill you? When was the last shooting/stabbing/assault you were in? You think the HR guy in 2E that had 3 Bloody Mary's and is asleep with his shoes off is the better choice...? Not moi.....

So let any knife on then? And we have discussed 9/11 before. People should have stopped "cooperating" after it became apparent what was happening. All evidence points that it did not until United 93.

Martial arts will lose to an edged weapon almost every time, and I say that as a 15 year experienced MA (muy thai, BJJ, JKD).

That you know of. I know of none either, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Nor does it mean that they haven't been deterred by extra security. It is impossible to prove a negative.

You can spend years and millions of dollars training farm animals to dance, but that doesn't make them Fred Astaire. On top of that the violations that we've heard about show us that these guys are not quite all the "best of the best". Sleeping on the job was one violation pointed out in the IG report. I'm sure that many if not most of them are really really good at what they do, but not all.

Actually I have a fair amount of experience in violent crowd control so I'm sure of how I will react. And yes many passengers will not be in shape or have the will to act. But I believe that enough will on most any flight in the world. That's why I haven't been afraid at all to fly after 9/11.

No, we didn't (knowingly) let Bowie knives on board pre-9/11. But it's ridiculous to not allow tiny knives, cuticle scissors and other small objects. Yes you could possibly slit one throat with scissors, but no way could you take over a plane anymore. That attack is gone forever.

Yet you could walk into any crowded narrow bar and kill several people with a small knife before you were restrained. Should we ban all sharp objects from public places? Should we all live in rubber rooms so we won't hurt ourselves?

I agree with eliminating the silly articles you mention. But you still need to screen for edged weapons of merit.

And as for "gone forever" you are speculating.

And there is a distinct difference between killing a lot of people on a plane in a terroristic attack than killing twice as many in a bar. That is why one is a national security item and one is not, merely tragic.

You have to approach this from a broad perspective and put figures in context. Obviously, you have your experience base which sounds like it's on the pointy end of the spear. That's fine for one-on-one engagements with a bad guy. But, any military planner (including this one) will tell you that one-on-one engagements (soldier-soldier, aircraft-aircraft, ship-ship) is an incredibly inefficient means to prevail in combat. It's all about doctrine and how to employ it.... factors such as mass, concentration of firepower, element of surprise, etc. By the time you get to shooting pop-up targets and executing your capture of the bad guy, all of this has been thought out and tested in simulations and in realistic scenarios and updated as a result of real-world experience...hence my previous comments on various threads about fighting the next war rather than the last one.

You're obviously passionate about your profession and your ability to protect & serve. Most people, I would assume, are grateful. However, don't discount for a nanosecond the ability for the untrained person to do extraordinary things -- even without any formal training. The people on Flight 93, in the 25 minutes before they acted, needed to sort through all of the doctrine and tactics military and police forces take decades to develop and refine. From all accounts, it appears that they effectively executed a couple of the doctrinal fundamentals: element of surprise and concentration of firepower.

On the other hand, a couple of highly-trained FAMs armed to the teeth are no match for an adversary who effectively employs some of the elements of doctrine I noted above.

I won't get into a further discussion about defendable arguments. Our experience bases put us light-years apart on the subject.

Not attempting to answer for TSA here, but my suspicion is that there are no privacy-friendly ways to resolve alarms.

The lawyers and the public probably won't tolerate body cavity searches (rightly so) of 85-year-old women, 3-year-old children, and in general innocent US citizens who happen to have used the wrong kind of lotion that day. And from a risk-avoidance and CYA standpoint, it's better to not detect the explosive than to detect it with an ETD and fail to stop it.

All you have written above is true. But is not any terrorist incident a one-on-one, or force-on-force engagement? Is that not what we are discussing?

I don't discount anything. I just don't COUNT on it. I applaud and deeply respect Flight 93 and what they did. I just state that we must know the nature of the problem and not delude ourselves that this "fighting back" is an assured event when it is not. Any person that is in a hijacking today or tomorrow will have to sort through the same data. They only difference between now and on 9/11 on United 93 is that the data has had time to penetrate. The overwhelming effects of adrenaline are still the same. The debilitating fear, nausea, avoidance (this is not really happening, etc.) still remain. THAT is what training does-minimize that.

We abandoned civilian militias because professional military is demonstrable superior. This is the concept I am addressing here.

True (assuming the FAMs do not possess those elements, which is arguable), but I give them a better chance than the untrained civilian who has not been in a fight since the 3rd grade. I hope then, when the FAMs are dead and so are some of the bad guys that the rest of the pax will jump up and finish the job. Leadership is what is necessary, and I am afraid that the first UNARMED leader to jump up will be brutally killed by the terrorists to set the example and cower the rest.

Too bad. I loved the exchange. Thanks.

Tell you what.. how about 100 men armed with knives versus 100 men with broken wine bottles?

See my point?

There are about 36,000 police officers in NYPD. How many have killed a man? Percentage wise not many. Does that make the rest of the trained police officers any less of an officer? No. How many people walk by a crime in progress? Many, they don't want to get involved. How many would be the first to jump in? Not many. I have been to too many scenes where a women was robbed and beat up in a street full of people and not one person helped.

If you are going to stand up against a group of hi-jackers make sure someone else stands up with you or you will be the sacrificial lamb.