I can only hope that the government spends a huge amount of money to take away more rights, so we can pretend that they are making us safer.

Asa Phelps: What the article says - twice - is "explosives in military-grade wrapping".

Yeah, exactly WTF is meant by that? It was a CO2 bomb in OD green shrink wrap?

Anyways, no, not time to panic, I can tell you from grim experience that they could readily spot 10 year old C4 residue 10 years ago. PETN detection I think they added recently.

Asa Phelps: A little of it is a tragic result of group think.

Also a slave to the MIC.

We worked on a tragic bail-out once. There was a project - I assume it's still classified since we haven't been told otherwise and I haven't seen it on the net - that was ab initio a really nice idea. The sort of thing you see and say wow, I could see that being really useful for the group that owned the project. Not so much for Willy Warfighter, but it was targeted for a special group that had a specific use for it.

And apparently, it started off well.

Then it started. First, the original project owner made the mistake of trying to add budget funds by expanding the target audience - a foolish error, since it took at least SOME training to use this thing without getting yourself killed. Anyways, once it was let outside the secure fencing under the concept "...and other groups as necessary" it began to...grow.

The non-special brass now owned a piece of it. And they all wanted their names on the pie. So it gained major armament. And then went from a somewhat silent electric motor to gas, to diesel. And tripled in size. And gained a turret. And autonav. And more. It just wouldn't quit growing. Before you knew it, it was a nightmare, the thing had dragged on forever and the initial second tiers were going bankrupt due to the scope changes that their contracts foolishly didn't cover.

We got dragged in as the "guys that bail out f...d up spec op projects" and were assigned the electronics, at which point we discovered that the thing had been architected by high school students on crack or something. The basic guts of the thing were so very badly conceived that they weren't salvageable. I wish I could tell you the details. Suffice it to say, no redundancy at all. Not in hardware, not in software. One missed bit in a command stream EVAR and the whole thing was permanently in the toilet until you rebooted the system, which was an inevitability given that the hardware was RS232, run through turret rings.

That was our first project divorce. We got one look at what we had to fix, made some suggestions as to how to start rearchitecting it (mil 1553 for a start) and was told that redundancy (and working) was going to take second place to mounting a Mk19 on the turret, and we said 'adios'.

Brown pants time for sure.

Would you rather he wasn't stopped from boarding?

Was there a blasting cap or initiator or something to actually set them off? If not, it's still not good, but it's now OMG WHAT'S HAPPENING bad.

FTA: "He said he did not know where the man was being held,"

DAMN, gettin' a quick start to this NDAA indefinite detention, eh?

That depends on how brown he is.

Midland International Airport?

Huh?

As long as it wasn't shampoo, a water bottle, shoes, or a mobile phone in non-airplane mode, we should be safe.

I can't wait to see what TSA bullshiat is going to come from this....

KidneyStone: Let's see, explosives, New Years Eve...nah, the turrsts would never want to kick off a new year with a plane full of people being sprayed all over the sky

i really hope it turns out to be nothing

The trolls will have to break out the herp derp early for the new year if it's a white guy.

His pals needed close air support so he was trying to get an improvised bomber to afghanistan

Come and get it, you Yankee infidel pig-dogs! I spit on your freedoms... *pfftuu*.

Still no cure for Texans.

Wait, they got one? And it only took 9 years and countless hundreds of thousands of stroked scrotums? TSA works yay.

A government agency bought some software from the company i work for through a reseller (we avoid government work as much as we can),installed it, and then sat on it for 2 years. Then they decided they wanted a refund. Um, software doesn't work that way. You buy it and it is yours.

JohnAnnArbor: Was there a blasting cap or initiator or something to actually set them off? If not, it's still not good, but it's now OMG WHAT'S HAPPENING bad.

Explosives become unstable over time, which is a Bad Thing. That also means they "stink" to the detectors, so they might get caught on the ground. Even without a blasting cap he could probably set it off using a Finux laptop with a serial port.

It's just over 300 miles between Midland and DFW. Why wouldn't the dumb bugger simply drive, for all the time he'd have to wait in the airport? Unless someone was trying to make a point, or test the system. Just saying.

thought allowed to carry on so could light up immediately on arrival at terminal...........oh

It's happened before:

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/node/25268?c=airport_aviation_security (new window)
"A live stun grenade found in a soldier's carry-on bag at El Paso International Airport on Dec. 15 caused a 30-minute delay for 150 passengers there, said TSA.".

Again, a non-story.

UsikFark: JohnAnnArbor: Was there a blasting cap or initiator or something to actually set them off? If not, it's still not good, but it's now OMG WHAT'S HAPPENING bad.

Explosives become unstable over time, which is a Bad Thing. That also means they "stink" to the detectors, so they might get caught on the ground. Even without a blasting cap he could probably set it off using a Finux laptop with a serial port.

Meh. Not only isn't it hard to get one, you can sort of make one up out of shotgun primers with a bit of machine shop work. Actually I think at least one guy makes a shotgun primer pseudo blasting cap kit off the shelf.

Thank God for the TSA.

KidneyStone: 12349876: KidneyStone: Let's see, explosives, New Years Eve...nah, the turrsts would never want to kick off a new year with a plane full of people being sprayed all over the sky

i really hope it turns out to be nothing

The trolls will have to break out the herp derp early for the new year if it's a white guy.

Like McVeigh?

lone nut theory.

Not panicking until I've seen more data, like did he have a detonator? Mythbusters pretty much provided C4 cannot be detonated w/out a real detonator of some kind.

Course it could have been something else.

And yep, "Military Grade Wrapping" has got to be right up there on the meaningless phrases - MIGHT mean all the person quoted saw was something that looked like mil-spec writing on the package? Which again, might make sense if it was C4.

Question is, even if he was in military, how the heck did he get a brick or more of C4 off base? And why, of course.

What TSA thinks is explosive.

No.