Air Transport World | By: Mark Nensel | Jul 25, 2017:
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), working with US intelligence experts, built a large personal electronic device (PED) laden with explosives and tested it “on a real airplane, on the ground [and] pressurized,” US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary John Kelly said last week at a security forum event in Aspen, Colorado. “To say the least, it destroyed the airplane,” Kelly said.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum July 19, Kelly described the circumstances behind DHS’ March 21 ban on allowing passengers from 10 Middle Eastern airports to bring large PEDs into the passenger compartments of US-bound aircraft.
“People should understand that there are people who work very hard, long and hard, to knock down an airplane in flight,” Kelly said. “Ideally, they’d like to knock down a US airplane in flight on the way to the United States. That’s their Stanley Cup/World Series, if you will.”
Kelly indicated a new device had come to the attention of US security officials, but did not elaborate on the intelligence’s origin. “This particular one was not only sophisticated, but it was real and it was targeted at certain airports,” Kelly said. “So … TSA built a device, working with the intelligence community, working with the FBI, they built two devices, actually, [and] tested them. We didn’t feel at the time that overseas airports had the kind of security initially that could give me a comfort that they could detect this device.”
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