The Importance of Experience In Operating Security Equipment

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

By Arie Egozi

Even the best security equipment in the world will amount to nothing if the operator isn’t of the highest level. The situation today is such that many operators of such equipment, like X-ray machines in airports, lack experience. Investing in new and expensive equipment without investing in training the operators is negligent and is a risk to human lives.

Israel has accumulated vast knowledge in training operators for such equipment, but many other countries still use expensive equipment new equipment next to operators who lack the most basic understanding of them.

Experts say that although a lot of this equipment is designed to operate “automatically”, there’s no way it can operate optimally with the knowledge and experience of the operators.

Israeli experts say that this field is left unattended and there for strict international standards must be set. “The same way that governments can refuse malfunctioning planes or unauthorised pilots to fly in its skies, there must be a mechanism to prevent countries from operating security equipment with anything but highest level of experience,” said one expert and explained that a country must be able to refuse to operating flights in its territory if it knows those flights arrived from a place not using the best equipment or experienced operators. Today no country has the ability to do so and that, says the expert, is becoming quite the issue.

“In certain countries the operators are of the lowest levels and the proof for that is that in the US, for example, undercover inspectors manage time after time to smuggle weapons and explosives into the area and into the planes.”

As mentioned, all the experts are united in thinking that only international standards and a way to enforce them can change the situation.

When it’s obvious that the terrorism will only increase, the line of defense made up of explosive and weapons detection systems must be operated by experienced and knowledgeable people, otherwise there’s just no point investing in expensive and sophisticated equipment.