Having been successfully piloted at San Francisco International Airport, a new security initiative spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security will get underway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport next.
     Known as the Air Cargo Explosives Detection Pilot Program, the effort will be conducted at Sea-Tac air cargo facilities under collaboration between DHS’s Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
     The US$30 million cargo explosives screening pilot program will later be expanded to other “as yet unannounced “airports in the Midwest.
     The cargo community in the San Francisco Bay Area seems to have taken the beta-version of all of this in stride. Many of the freight forwarders and major shippers here were hardly aware that it was happening.
     “If that’s all DHS is going to do, more power to them,” said Francis Basconi, a flower shipper in Burlingame, California. “We really did not feel any impact from this at all.”
     Other shippers said that they had read about the heightened level of security, but were never touched personally by the experience.
     “We all saw something in the papers about this,” said Irene Jackson, freight forwarder in San Mateo, California.
     “That’s about the extent of it, though.
     “We never lost a shipment or had one delayed as a consequence.”
     Approximately 64,000 metric tons of commercial goods stored as belly cargo in aircraft calling in and out of Sea-Tac.
     While no specific start date has been announced, DHS spokesmen say the screening test program here will last until early summer, 2007.
     Other agencies involved in the Sea-Tac pilot program will be the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the New Jersey-based Transportation Security Laboratory.
     Air carriers, themselves, will also play an active role in the congressionally mandated program.
     The stated objective of the program is to gain a better grip on the technological and operational issues associated with explosives detection for air cargo.
     But DHS spokesmen say that the Sea-Tac stage will also concentrate on ”human cargo” smuggling.
     Dogs will be utilized in this phase, as will screeners armed with new technology to detect stowaways in cargo containers.
     Approximately 50% of all international air cargo is carried on passenger aircraft, and industry analysts say screening will be ramped up substantially in the coming years. Currently researchers are also searching for a better way of determining the overall economic impact such inspections will have on air commerce.
     Besides the use of canine teams and manual inspections, the systems and techniques now used for baggage screening at SFO will also be deployed at Sea-Tac.
     This includes “Explosive Detection Systems,” “Explosive Trace Detectors,” and standard X-ray machines, canine teams and manual inspections.
     According to DHS spokesmen, data collected through this program will allow the research team to check the accuracy of computer models.
     These models currently simulate the air cargo screening process at Sea-Tac, and may be expanded to the entire airport.
     DHS’s Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate includes what is called internally the “Countermeasures Test Beds program,” designed to provide the agency with an independent and objective testing capability.
     This program provides information about scientific, economic and operational issues associated with deploying technologies.
     Additionally, the program provides data to decision-makers as to which technologies are suitable for different missions.
(Patrick Burnson)