YOUR flight left on time and you are gazing out of the window. Suddenly, a passenger brandishes what could be a knife. Do you (a) look around for a sky marshal in the hope that they will draw their gun; or (b) feel sick at the thought of anyone – even the good guy – wielding a firearm inside a crowded plane at 30,000 feet?
As the debate about sky marshals rumbles on, one crucial factor remains under-explored: if sky marshals must be armed, what type of weapons should they carry? The assumption seems to be that conventional firearms are the only option. Yet governments have spent millions in the past decade looking at so-called non-lethal weapons for precisely this sort of scenario. Why is no one talking about these?
Government officials certainly won’t. “We can’t comment on what they are armed with,” says the UK’s Department for Transport. What about using, say, less risky stun guns? “Even if it were something that we were looking at, we wouldn’t talk about it.” Why? “Because that information could be of use to any potential terrorist.” Ordinary passengers, it seems, have no right to know – even in broad terms – what type of weapon the person sitting next to them might be carrying.
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A few details can be pieced together, however. In May 2002, while the US was revamping its sky marshal programme in the wake of 9/11, a Boeing executive called Ron Hinderberger testified to the US House of Representatives. Hinderberger reported that Boeing had carried out a “high-level analysis” of the effects that discharging a firearm would have on an aircraft. Simple bullet holes in the plane’s skin are no big worry. The plane will depressurise, but slowly: the fuselage is designed to withstand a whole door falling off. But, in Hinderberger’s words, a more “unfortunate placement of shots” could cause a fire, explosion or engine failure.
In fact, sky marshals may already be carrying specially modified firearms to reduce this risk: low-velocity guns or guns that fire “frangible” ceramic bullets that shatter if they hit anything harder than human tissue. But such guns could still kill innocent passengers or fall into the wrong hands once on board. “If you’re a terrorist you won’t even have to worry about smuggling a gun on board. They will be there already,” says Peter Swift of Quiet Wing, a company in Seattle, Washington, that makes bulletproof cockpit doors.
So why not use non-lethal weapons? In the same hearing to which Hinderberger testified, a United Airlines executive called Henry Krakowski reported that his company was already investing in Tasers, a stun gun increasingly used by police forces around the world. United Airlines had bought enough of these guns from Arizona firm Taser International to put two in every airplane, Krakowski said, and it was training its pilots to use them.
Instead of firing bullets, the Taser gun shoots out two metal barbs tethered to long wires. As soon as the barbs find their target, the wires transmit a 50,000-volt shock – enough to floor the most aggressive of individuals. The victim recovers when the current is turned off.
Taser International’s government affairs spokesman, Steve Tuttle, claims the company has proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the guns are safe to use on planes. Mobile phones may occasionally cause problems because of the frequency of their signals, but the Taser is more like a weak lightning bolt, which the avionics are designed to cope with.
“We have fired the Taser into every piece of equipment aboard every platform that United Airlines has, trying to damage it – without success,” says Tuttle. He also reports that they managed to land an Airbus on autopilot while repeatedly discharging a stun gun in the cockpit.
Korean Airlines already uses Tasers on its aircraft, says Tuttle, as do several others who wish to remain unnamed. But United Airlines can’t use them. Two years after buying its weapons, it is still waiting for approval from the relevant US agency.
But which agency is that? Ask the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about the status of stun guns and it will refer you to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), who in turn will suggest contacting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). No, “the department does not regulate that”, says the DHS. Try the FAA.
Eventually the FAA will offer this: “We have not done any testing and we have not certified any Tasers.” But why? Well, you’ll have to ask the TSA; the FAA only acts on orders from higher up the chain, comes the response.
“It has been beyond frustrating for us,” says Tuttle. “We have speculated, we have held our breath, we have turned blue and we have thought of giving up hundreds of times.”
None of the FAA, TSA or DHS, nor their British equivalents, would tell żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ what, or even whether, there have been any discussions about the pros and cons of stun guns versus firearms. If there is something about stun gun technology that rules them out for use on aircraft, why shouldn’t we be told? If there isn’t, then why aren’t they approved? And if the agencies don’t know, why aren’t they finding out? Real though it is, the threat of terrorism is a poor excuse for unthinking and excessive secrecy.