Shifting Ambitions


While more attacks are planned for soft targets, like financial centers and energy infrastructure, blowing up airplanes remains an obsession of terrorists.


“Just as we are getting better at intercepting, they are also getting much better at figuring out ways to evade our security standards. Had that May bomb that was intercepted in Yemen with the help of Saudi intelligence arrived at an airport there is little doubt that it could have been secreted on to an aircraft undetected.” Brian Finlay, Henry L. Stimson Center


Large, well-known properties, medical facilities, energy and transportation infrastructures, including railways and shipping, are seemingly high priority targets for terrorists. Airlines continue to be major targets, requiring increasingly sophisticated bombs capable of passing undetected through increasingly sophisticated security systems. If officials had not intercepted a very sophisticated bomb in May of this year, it very likely would have evaded existing security.


Copyright © 2012 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise.


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