“You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.”
— IRA Statement, 1984
In the first three parts of this four-part series, we examined the lone wolf terrorist phenomenon as it applies to ensuring the best possible security outcomes for the homeland given the time, money, resources and civil liberties environments in which many of us operate.
One thorny issue, however – in addition to the fact that, by definition, lone wolf terrorism is notoriously difficult to anticipate or predict – is that such bad actors present an asymmetric threat, meaning they will always attempt to pit their strengths against our weaknesses. This is especially the case when such individuals choose to utilize homemade explosives, or HMEs, made from inorganic chemicals.
Detection Difficulties
Unfortunately, HMEs of the above type — such as from a variety of nitrates found in fertilizers, for example, or from over-the-counter hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid – are still largely undetectable using current technologies. Magnetometers are no defense, and X-ray as well as currently deployed explosive trace detection or ETD machines are of little help, either.
In the above case, such IMS (Ion Mobility Spectrometry) devices can’t be reprogrammed to pick up inorganics, as they’re only built to detect organics such as PETN and RDX, two substances used in military-grade explosives. Also, X-ray machines and trained operators can quite often pick out the coloration gradients presented by such organics, though this is not the case when it comes to nitrates and other precursor chemicals used in HMEs.
Creating Our Own Luck
To be clear, we need to keep in mind the Irish Republican Army’s reminder – made in the aftermath of a failed 1984 bombing attempt against then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a Brighton hotel – that bad actors, including lone wolf terrorists, need only be lucky once while we in the homeland security community must be lucky all the time.
Is the above true, though? That we must be “lucky?” Or can we create our own version of “luck” through application of sound security policies, procedures, intelligence gathering and use of the right equipment at the right places and times?
I believe that we can indeed create our own “luck.” But how?
Improving Our Ecosystem
For starters, we’ll need to improve or at least adjust our homeland security ecosystem in anticipation of the proliferation of information available on building or constructing HMEs.
In Part 3 of this series I pointed out that we should avoid the temptation to “fight the last war,” so to speak. Let us be proactive rather than reactive, in other words. Doing so will partly rely on the right kind of intelligence gathering activities – which is a subject to be explored separately, though intelligence synthesis within, among and between certain federal security agencies is already an ongoing process – paired with directed application of not only policy and procedure but also the right kinds of mechanical tools.
What Sort of Tools?
Fortunately for our mission, devices to detect the presence of inorganic chemicals already exist. For example, some devices make use of a detection process called CZE, or “Capillary Zone Electrophoresis,” and they’re similar in size to current ETDs deployed at US airports across the nation. Also, detection dogs already within the homeland security ecosystem can be brought in for additional training and then “imprinted” so that they can alert to the presence of HMEs.
How Would it Work?
Leaving aside the need for the right kinds of intelligence gathering activities (making use of everything from OSINT, or “Open-Source Intelligence,” HUMINT, or “Human Intelligence,” SIGINT, or “Signals Intelligence,” Surveillance and so on), there are ways we can quickly improve the homeland security ecosystem in term of our processes, procedures and mechanical…
This article was originally published by a www.hstoday.us . Read the Original article here. .