There are aspects of effective airplane security strategy that can be replicated with School, public education and hospital security. Reinforced cockpit doors and secondary barriers are one of the most cost effective and effective measures for deterring and foiling hijackings. There are companies offering military grade security doors that designed to look like ordinary doors. Remo’s doors are made out of 18-gauge galvanized steel and bullet-resistant glass. The door weighs 150 pounds and offers a high level of ballistic protection. Security is offered without making the schools feel like a jail.
Some doors can take 100 rounds of an assault weapon. AR-15s fire 45-400 rounds per minute. It would be 1-3 minutes to penetrate each secure door. It would also reduce the number of rounds available to an attacker. 100 rounds of AR-15 ammo weighs about 5-10 lbs. 200 rounds would weigh 10-15 pounds. If each class room had a secure door as well, then it would increase the time and ammo needed to go from room to room. It would increase the weight of ammo needed. Shooters with handguns would be stopped at the first secure door.
The US has been having about 20-40 school security incidents each year. The active school shooter incident numbers are about 0-4 per year.
“It will stop the first few bullets from penetrating all the way through. And the lock will jam if you shoot at it to try to open it,” he said. They are also fire-resistant for up to 90 minutes, he added.
Remo Security doors cost about $2500 each for schools. R2P Innovation has a school security door that weighs 260 pounds and can absorb 100 rounds from any assault weapon and cost about $4,000 each.
There are 120,000 schools (private and public) in the USA and about 70-80 million students. This likely means about 4 million doors. High volume transition for all doors could get mass produced transition down to $2000 per door. This would be about $8 billion. Windows and wall upgrades could be performed when there is major school maintenance.
In FY 2023, the federal Department of Education (ED) had $271 Billion of budget distributed among its 10 sub-components.
California’s K-12 education budget is over $100 billion per year.
$8 billion would be less than 2% of the state and federal education budgets for one year.
$2000 for training and arming one or two staff at each school would be another $1.6 billion per year. If a principal, teacher or admin staff could be hired with some military or security background then they could be trained and certified with a program similar to the Flight Deck security program. Trained and armed staff would get an extra $5000 per year in salary. Two people per school would add $10,000 per year in salary. $12000 per year times 130,000 schools is $1.6 billion per year.
This would be combined with some additional alarm and video camera systems and having life feeds available to nearby police, national guard and automatic or rapid triggering of 911. Processes and apps could be used to improve response times.
This program would also be extended to Universities, Colleges, hospitals and various workplaces.
Airplane Security Cost Benefit and Effectiveness Analysis
By April 2003, all air carriers had to meet the requirement of cockpit doors that are resistant to guns and grenades.
There are more air marshals on every flight. Israeli commercial airlines have two security agents with Uzis on each plane.
There is a Flight deck security training program.
There was a cost benefit analysis of the airplane security measures.
Terrorism Risks and Cost-Benefit Analysis of Aviation Security (2013)
Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller
We evaluate, for the U.S. case, the costs and benefits of three security measures designed to reduce the likelihood of a direct replication of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To do so, we assess risk reduction, losses, and security costs in the context of the full set of security layers. The three measures evaluated are installed physical secondary barriers (IPSB) to restrict access to the hardened cockpit door during door transitions, the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), and the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) Program. In the process, we examine an alternate policy measure: doubling the budget of the FFDO program to $44 million per year, installing IPSBs in all U.S. aircraft at a cost of $13.5 million per year, and reducing funding for FAMS by 75% to $300 million per year. A break-even cost-benefit analysis then finds the minimum probability of an otherwise successful attack required for the benefit of each security measures to equal its cost. We find that the IPSB is cost effective if the annual attack probability of an otherwise successful attack exceeds 0.5% or one attack every 200 years. The FFDO program is cost effective if the annual attack probability exceeds 2%. On the other hand, more than two otherwise successful attacks per year are required for FAMS to be costeffective. A policy that includes IPSBs, an increased budget for FFDOs, and a reduced budget for FAMS may be a viable policy alternative, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars per year with consequences for security that are, at most, negligible.
The FAMS (Federal Air Marshall) program costs $1.2 billion per year and its effectiveness is in doubt.
21 layers of airplane security, 15 concern preboarding security—deterrence and apprehension of terrorists before boarding aircraft:
(1) Intelligence
(2) International partnerships
(3) Customs and border protection
(4) Joint terrorism task force
(5) No-fly list and passenger prescreening
(6) Crew vetting
(7) Visible Intermodal Protection Response Teams
(8) Canines
(9) Behavioral detection officers
(10) Travel document checker
(11) Checkpoint/transportation security officers (TSOs)
(12) Checked baggage
(13) Transportation security inspectors
(14) Random employee screening
(15) Bomb appraisal officers
The remaining six layers of security provide inflight security:
(16) Passenger resistance
(17) Trained flight crew
(18) Hardened cockpit doors
(19) FAMS
(20) Law enforcement officers
(21) FFDOs
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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The events of January 6 were the direct result of the democratic leaders of Congress deliberately and purposely ignoring pleas to deploy the national guard. The president at the time also offered to provide the guard.
NextBigFuture: 50-thou thick galvanized sheet armored steel doors vs. “assault weapons”
I know it isn’t a popular opinion, but those that argue capital punishment isn’t a deterrent made it so after declawing it with decade long stays on death row and endless appeals. It would be a deterrent if we put 26,000 murders to death every year (CDC says 26,000 homicides/yr in USA). Walking 26,000 offenders down the plank into a rat infested shadowy ravine (maybe 50 yds deep) while broadcasting without talkies on youtube would drop the violent crime rate like it was Singapore – cheap too. Judicious use of capital punishment is about the one thing I admire about Saudi Arabia.
The problem with school shootings is the majority of it already accounted for their death.
In that case, no deterrence is possible.
Airplanes are commercial entities continuously maintained (doors included).
You can not do the same with government-run schools. The maintenance will be neglected and things will not work when needed or not in the way designed.
I am not from the US, but reducing casualties from school shootings by installing bullet-proof doors and arming teachers is the literal definition of “treating symptoms instead of the cause”.
The $9.6 billion is better spent taking care of student’s mental health, social support & counselling etc.
There is $500+ billion per year going into education. Both safe doors and mental can be done. BTW: The US spends $280 billion per year on mental health. An extra 4% on mental health will make the critical difference? We spent a lot but the 4% would fix everything?
To a large extent the cause is obviously SSRIs. These are known to cause inconsolable rage monsters among teenagers who just started or just quit them suddenly. If you dig a bit you almost cannot find a school shooting where the shooter isn’t on SSRI’s. This is a well known side effect and SSRIs and there are several popular SSRIs that have carried a black box warning that they may increase suicidal ideation and particularly in those under 25 since 2004; expanded to include almost all of them in 2006.
This has been known for decades and still SSRIs is handed out like candy to those most vulnerable and these people still have access to guns.
It’s not at all about the access to guns. It used to be possible to mail order a literal thomson submachine gun from a magazine. Very popular with mobsters and eventually banned; not due to mass shootings, but due to organized crime spraying down rivals.
It used to be normal for schools to have shooting ranges; still mass shootings were almost unheard of despite easy access to guns at the school. You brought a rifle to school, you stored it in a safe at the school and took it out for target practice; and that was just somehow OK without causing a spate of mass shootings.
It’s not the accessibility of guns that cause mass shootings.
[ What’s the analysis on reasons for action (beside the possibility of SSRI’s furthering decisions and plans towards action), are there general studies on that difficulty?
‘https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/Protecting_Americas_Schools.pdf#page=4’
‘https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-455’
‘https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwip98Ci776BAxXTRvEDHVcZAvQQFnoECA8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fbi.gov%2Ffile-repository%2Fstats-services-publications-school-shooter-school-shooter&usg=AOvVaw3d83vtpRq6HsiQhEQ6H_mI&opi=89978449’ #page=16
‘https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9388351/’ age related, table 2]
There is a really simple strategy. If guns designed to kill humans are hard to get. Then all other defense measures are easier. Deer should only require one rifle bullet not a extended mag armor pricing AR-15. Or hundreds of rounds of ammo. Other things with great capablity to cause harm like ammonium nitrate, chemical precursors, advanced tech, nuclear material are heavily regulated, why not efficient weapons?
I realize the purposed idea is pure insanity.
The US has 400 million guns already in circulation. I believe in the 10% of the situations where military or police try to confront a group of over 100 heavily armed people , many people die in a firefight. gun sales are over 12 million per year. There are about 24 million AR-15s and about 2.8 million are added every year. Over 750,000 fully automatic machine guns are registered. There are also unregistered machine guns and AR-15s.
Canada has had a large number mass shootings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Canada Canada should have nine times fewer based upon population.
Norway has the most mass shooting deaths per million people.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country
Average (Mean) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015):
Norway — 1.888
Serbia — 0.381
France — 0.347
Macedonia — 0.337
Albania — 0.206
Slovakia — 0.185
Switzerland — 0.142
Finland — 0.132
Belgium — 0.128
Czech Republic — 0.123
United States — 0.089
Austria — 0.068
Netherlands — 0.051
Canada — 0.032
England — 0.027
Germany — 0.023
Russia — 0.012
Italy — 0.009
Weapons need proper maintenance and, as everything with mechanical parts, deteriorate with use and deteriorate if neglected. Americans buy millions of weapons every year because they like guns but also to replace guns that are not safe to use. After wwii europe was filled with weapons. Ban the weapons and after a few years the number of usable weapons will start to decline. Criminals and police will always have access to weapons (as they have almost everywhere), but mass shoitings, office shootings and similar are due to the fact that common people have acces to weapons. I lived in italy, Switzerland, US and Sweden and the amount if money wasted in US to cope with the issue of weapons (without trying to reduce the amount if weapons). The schools i studied in and the ones my kids go and went outsude the US are welcoming places, with no checkpoints or guards. In US schools are planned around the fact that you have school shootings. You redesign the schools, put checkpoints and armored doors, instead of banning the weapons. In my humble opinion it is insane.
Well something else that worked for air travel was arming pilots.
Physical security is a very expensive and ineffective approach to solve these kinds of attacks. Secure the school doors and the attacker moves to the playground. Secure the playground and the attack moves to sports field off school grounds. Secure those and the attacker moves to a mall, or church, or public playground, or train station, etc… Its a game of whack-a-mole unless we want to live in a military compound with barbed wire and sandbags, armed guards, and checkpoints on every corner. Even then, because attacks are rare, and the job of the security personnel is overwhelmingly boring, the attacker can still get through because the attack is never expected, and so the defenders are not fully on guard.
The alternative is intelligence. AI to scan social media for threats. human intelligence, good police and intelligence service work to identify the attacker early and neutralize the threat before it materializes.
Physical security on a plane is an exception, because a small attack (eg. killing the pilots) can bring down an entire plane killing hundreds on board or maybe thousands on the ground. So the cost benefit is better in that case. Same case could be made for nuclear power plants, chemical plants, etc… But not for the millions of civilian targets like schools, malls, churches, etc..
It is also possible the doors (or other physical features) are used by the attackers.
Maybe not the psychotic killers but terrorists.
It was shocking that the U.S. Capitol lacked this sort of security. All Important government buildings should be secured with doors that can’t be breached by a mob or paramilitary group. It should be possible for a remote security center to lock down a facility so an event like 01/06/22 couldn’t happen.