It’s now becoming clear exactly how many tens of millions of dollars the TSA spent on body scanners that have missed airport security threats, outraged passengers and brought the agency under congressional scrutiny.

The $160 million bill includes $120 million for the body scanners now in place in hundreds of airports nationwide, according to newly disclosed figures obtained by POLITICO. The rest of the money went to the agency’s “naked” X-ray scanners, which it pulled from airports two years ago amid worries about health risks and the devices’ detailed images of travelers’ bodies.


The cost breakdown, which the TSA recently turned over to some members of Congress, provides the latest look at the agency’s investment in body imaging technology since it decided to make the scanners the centerpiece of the checkpoint screening process. The price tag averages more than $150,000 per unit since the agency bought the first batch of 45 devices in 2008.

And for that money, lawmakers privy to classified reports say, the TSA has gotten a woeful failure rate. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson has such low confidence in the scanners’ ability to catch explosives and weapons that he says the agency should make fliers walk through metal detectors after passing through the body imaging machines.

“If you really want to keep using those, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t, at a minimum we should put a metal detector on the other side,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview. “Why not go through two? You’ve just gotta use common sense.”

It’s not the first time TSA technology has had problems. The agency previously spent tens of millions of dollars on other failed or discarded equipment, including explosives-detecting “puffer” machines that proved unreliable and prone to breakdowns.

The TSA and L-3 Communications, the company that supplied more than 99 percent of the body scanners used at the agency’s airport checkpoints, appear to hope that a mix of software patches, training improvements and other changes will boost the machines’ performance, according to lawmakers who have talked to Department of Homeland Security officials about the issue. But many security experts on and off the Hill say no amount of money or technological rejiggering will solve the TSA’s problems.

A recent security audit found that TSA had failed to find fake explosives and weapons in 96 percent of covert tests. And members of Congress familiar with the classified details say the body scanners are to blame for much of the problem.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said that while the TSA has spent a fortune on new equipment, he is “troubled about their capability to detect and prevent dangerous materials from passing through security checkpoints.”

Johnson said that while bomb detection is obviously a complex undertaking, “these things weren’t even catching metal.”

House committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) confirmed that L-3’s body scanners were the technology fingered in the audit and said that “the technology failure was a big part of the problem.” The chairman — a former federal prosecutor who spends much of his time thumbing through secret documents in the windowless bowels of the Capitol — added that the manufacturer guarantees an accuracy far below 100 percent.

L-3 did not immediately comment on the criticisms.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said he has received assurances from L-3’s CEO that the company will work with the department to improve the technology.

TSA officials said security concerns prevent them from commenting on specific improvements following the audit. But they said in a written statement that the agency has begun taking steps “to improve screening effectiveness, including new training for all TSA officers, improvements in alarm resolution procedures, and, in partnership with private sector partners, a range of measures to increase detection standards of our screening equipment.”

Unlike metal detectors, which create a magnetic field to detect metallic objects, the TSA’s body scanners use millimeter wave technology. They project radio frequency energy over the traveler’s body, then interpret the energy reflected back and highlight any suspect areas on a computerized stick-figure image.

Steve Bucci, a security expert who was an Army Special Forces officer and former top Pentagon official, said the TSA should try a software patch if it can make the machines more effective. But “we’ve got to realize that there is not a pure technological fix that is going to give us complete security and complete convenience,” said Bucci, who is now a policy director at the Heritage Foundation.

He added that no patch will solve a fundamental problem: Not all TSA agents are highly competent or know how to use the machines correctly.

“Most of them are really good, very polite, very efficient, very professional,” he said. “But there are a lot of them that aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.”

TSA officials are working to determine how much of the machines’ failure rate can be attributed to human error.

Another concern is how well the machines are maintained. A separate inspector general report from May said that “because TSA does not adequately oversee equipment maintenance, it cannot be assured that routine preventive maintenance is performed or that equipment is repaired and ready for operational use.”

Lawmakers were so concerned by those findings that the House passed a bill this summer, in a 380-0 vote, that would force the agency to create specific maintenance guidance and penalize those who don’t mind the new rules.

Anthony Roman, a pilot and security expert who also designs management software, said probably only a small percentage of the body imaging machines’ failure rate can be chocked up to the technology itself. The rest is likely because of the TSA’s “low-paid, under-motivated, not incredibly well-trained personnel,” he said.

To drive down an error rate, you have to first understand what’s failing. And for TSA, that means more covert testing, Roman suggests.

“There should be an entire, robust department of internal security audit at TSA. Their entire job should be penetration. And that should be happening every day on a random basis,” he said. “And from that data, we can then determine what’s failing here technologically and what’s failing here in terms of human operator.”

But even if the agency figures out why its machines aren’t working well and can drastically draw down the 96 percent overall failure rate, its work won’t be done, Roman said.

“The software has to continually evolve,” he said. “Why? Because that 0.5 percent today will become 5 percent in two years, because our enemies are constantly evolving their techniques, constantly evaluating our technology, constantly probing our security checkpoints, and constantly improving their methods of concealment and attack.

“So it’s a cat-and-mouse game. It’s not a static, one-time solution.”

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, suggests the TSA look beyond the technology in trying to find new security fixes.

“In a situation like this, if one bad person gets through and they have a bomb or a weapon, it could be a terrible tragedy for hundreds of people,” Carper said in an interview. “So I think we have an obligation to look around the world and to look at technology here and to find better ways, on an ongoing basis, to protect our safety and security.”