In the wake of the failed attempt in December 2009 to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight with powder explosives, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has accelerated the revamp of its airport screening technologies. Armed with funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, TSA is spending $50 million on trace-explosives detection systems, $22 million on liquid-explosives scanners (see story on page 28), and $73 million on controversial full-body scanners, which might have revealed the explosives knitted to the December suspect’s underwear.
So far, TSA has installed more than 95 full-body scanners, at about $160 000 each, in 31 US airports; it plans to deploy up to 450 by the end of the year and 500 more next year. Among the primary suppliers are California-based Rapiscan Systems, whose system generates images from backscattered x-ray radiation, and New York–based L-3 Communications, whose scanners generate images from reflected or...
