Tuesday’s attack by suspected Islamic State terrorists at two locations in Belgium including Brussels’ international airport highlights how the attackers’ tactics are evolving in ways that will become increasingly difficult to counter, airport security experts say. Instead of trying to get on planes, they may target the airports themselves, as the terrorists did in Tuesday’s attack.
“What I worry about is that we are looking at smaller, but more frequent, attacks,” said Brian Chow, an adjunct physical scientist at the RAND Corporation who studies weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles. “They are getting harder to predict and more difficult to defend against.”
While such attacks would result in fewer deaths than the larger efforts, they would make it easier for a small number of terrorists to stage multiple incidents before they got caught, Chow said. One suspect in Tuesday’s attacks is still at large, according to Belgian officials.
Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, whose members work at LAX, which has been the subject of several attacks, warns that “we’ve been lucky.” A particular problem, he said, is the crowding of people and vehicles at airports, which itself creates tempting targets for attacks. Ironically, that is largely a result of Transportation Safety Administration procedures that slow down passenger screening, creating bottlenecks and large crowds.
“The biggest issue at LAX is the traffic. We have got to get people in and out of their faster,” he said.
Airport security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has mainly focused on using more aggressive screening methods to prevent terrorists from boarding planes. Tuesday’s attack at the Brussels airport, however, occurred at the check-in area where passengers arrive. The Belgium authorities suspect that three people were involved in the attacks and that they used both guns and suicide bombs. The airport attack killed a dozen people and injured about 30 more. Another 20 people were killed in a separate, but related terrorist attack at a commuter rail station. The radical Islamic group the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for both.
Attacking the airport itself has been a common tactic for terrorists. LAX has been the location of two such deadly incidents in recent years. In 2002, a lone Egyptian-born gunman opened fire at the ticket counter for Israel’s El Al airline killing two and wounding four before he was shot by an Israeli security officer. In 2013, a Los Angeles man opened fire at the TSA screening area, killing a federal agent and injuring two other people before the gunman was wounded in a shoot-out with police.
Even before Sept. 11, terrorists often made direct attacks on airports. A 2003 Rand study co-authored by Chow found that one-third of all international air travel-related attacks since 1980 — about 75 attacks causing 78 deaths — involved targeting passengers in the airport itself.
Airports are inviting targets because of the masses of people present, the open nature of airport terminals, drop-off areas and baggage claims, and the fact that regular luggage can hide weapons until the moment of the attack, experts say.
“There is no one tactic or strategy that can be developed to prevent these incidents in the future or to provide a better security stance. … A lone gunman who is intent on senselessly destroying the lives of others may be nearly impossible to detect or deter until the first shot is fired,” said Kevin Murphy, president of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, in 2014 testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee regarding the LAX shooting the previous year.
An additional issue at U.S. airports is the difficulty in managing federal and local law enforcement. While the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Safety Administration maintains a major role at all airports, their agents are not actual law enforcement officials with the ability to arrest or carry guns.
“Even as a federal agent, they do not have the power to enforce state and local laws. At the end of the day it is still local law enforcement that does that,” McClain said.
However, local law enforcement can be subject to federal rules. After the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, the federal government mandated that local officers be stationed at every airport screening area. The policy was abandoned after a few years due to budgetary reasons because DHS had to reimburse the local enforcement agencies for their officers’ time.
A TSA official could not be reached for comment. In a statement regarding the Brussels attacks, the agency said it was deploying additional agents to major airports and “working closely with state and local law enforcement, airport and transit authorities, and the aviation industry.”
