Bomb Detection Firm Sees a Sales Boom
The Federal Aviation Administration’s ruling requiring U.S. airlines to purchase detectors to screen checked luggage for bombs is good news for Science Applications International Corp., the San Diego-based company that is the only manufacturer of the high-technology device.
SAIC plans to expand its manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara, Calif., early next year and could hire as many as 50 additional workers to produce the devices. Called thermal neutron analysis detectors, the $1-million machines are the only FAA-approved device available.
However, the FAA mandate, issued Wednesday, is expected to spur other manufacturers to develop competing models for a share of what is likely to become a nearly $1-billion market.
As a result of the FAA’s action, U.S. airlines will be required by 1991 to install about 150 detectors at 40 “high-risk” domestic and foreign airports to screen checked baggage for international flights. By the end of the decade nearly 900 detectors are expected to be installed at airports in the United States and overseas.
The first of the 10-ton devices is expected to go into operation today at the TWA terminal at New York’s Kennedy International Airport. The FAA has announced that Gatwick Airport near London will soon receive a detector but has not identified any other specific sites.
The ruling is an effort by federal regulators to counter terrorist attacks, such as the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 last December over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers aboard the plane were killed.
SAIC is an employee-owned company involved in research and development of products for national security, energy production, health and environmental protection, and high-technology fields. For the fiscal year ended Jan 1., it posted $865 million in sales. The company does not release its profit figures. In part because of the FAA action, SAIC anticipates that the current year’s sales will reach $1 billion.
Although SAIC’s corporate headquarters is in San Diego, the detector is produced at a 36,000-square-foot leased facility in Santa Clara, SAIC Senior Vice President Charles L. Nichols said. Nearly two-thirds of the facility is used for manufacturing the bomb detectors, and 80 employees are assigned to the project, he added.
SAIC is capable of producing 24 units annually, but Nichols said, “We can accommodate 100 a year and more if necessary.” SAIC plans to move into a new 70,000-square-foot leased plant.
Some Oppose Device
According to Tsahi Gozani, SAIC’s chief scientist, the detector’s conveyor belt sends luggage through a field of thermal neutrons. Each item examined emits gamma rays as it passes through this field. Commercial and military explosives all contain nitrogenous material, which, when bathed through thermal neutrons, emit unique “signature” gamma rays.
Such “fingerprints” inform the detector that a potential explosive has been spotted, setting off an alarm. It can also detect plastic explosives such as Semtex, which is believed to have been the material in the bomb that brought down Flight 103.
But critics, including the Air Transportation Assn., the Washington-based trade group for major U.S. airlines, have opposed the device, arguing that it has not been tested in a prolonged operational setting. In a busy commercial setting, it says, a high number of false alarms during the screening process could snarl operations.
There is also a concern that at its current, FAA-established operating setting, the SAIC-made device may not be able to detect explosives weighing less than 2.5 pounds. As a result, a one-pound plastic explosive (the amount believed to have brought down Flight 103) for example, could slip by undetected.
‘18-Month Lead’
Airlines are balking at the unit’s price, but once it is in mass production SAIC expects to sell the detector to carriers for $750,000 or less.
“I expect that we don’t have more than an 18-month lead on the competition,” Nichols said, speculating on when other manufacturers may introduce a competing product.
Manufacturers such as Thermedics in Woburn, Mass., have already built portable bomb detectors for use with carry-on luggage and are working on machines to screen passengers. Titan Corp., a high-tech defense electronics firm, and Gamma-Metrics, a manufacturer of industrial instrumentation, both of which are based in San Diego, are also trying to devise the technology needed to detect explosives.
