Teaching the Lessons Learned in War, to Thwart Attackers at Home

Michael Spooneybarger for The New York Times — A robot was used during an exercise in disabling a bomb that was run by a naval school based at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

By C. J. CHIVERS, NYT

Operators of a CTX machine, or luggage scanner, spotted the first in a rollaway bag on a conveyor belt. The bag had been matched to a passenger. A review of surveillance video from the terminal showed its owner talking in a familiar way to another man.

That man’s bag, also thought to hold a bomb, was “out there” — the T.S.A. supervisor gestured toward luggage trailers on the asphalt near a gate.

So began an exercise in the Advanced Improvised Explosive Device Disposal course, a quietly busy American military school intended to help thwart a weapon indelibly linked to terrorism and war: the makeshift bomb, the type of weapon that had been used days before in the Boston Marathon attack.

(More here.)