Defence Director

Counter-terrorism: Scanning The Horizon

Lord West, the UK’s security minister, is tasked with bringing a range of capabilities to support a comprehensive and wide-ranging approach to tackling terrorist threats to the UK’s security

“I focus on how to pull together the interests of the whole nation and indeed internationally in terms of how to deal with this pernicious and unpleasant threat. It is a global challenge, we have got to face it globally and it is really important that we work together,” explained Lord West, often described as the UK’s security minister but to give him his full title, parliamentary under-secretary for security and counter-terrorism. He added: “The UK is a world leader in a large number of areas because, sadly, we have a very long experience in counter-terrorism.”

As part of the UK’s counter-terror strategy, the Home Office is seeking to mobilise the full range of related capabilities within the UK: innovation, science, technology and particularly commerce and industry. Lord West said: “[By translating] policy and operational needs into equipment and technology requirements, these can be put out to industry nationally and put out more broadly internationally so that we can actually leverage from that totality.

“I know from my travels around the UK that we have some of the best security equipment in service in the world, cutting edge technologies across the full spectrum of security, and the protection of people, assets, and the Critical National Infrastructure. A lot of this is provided by small companies – small and medium enterprises (SMEs) – some of which have amazing technologies that make a real difference in countering the threat from terrorism.”

Asked to single out particular areas, he added: “I believe we have particular strengths in surveillance, and chemical, biological and radiological [detection and protection]. I have to say when I talk about those attacks, it’s not a question of if there will be one; it is a question of when.” He added: “Historically we have had our heads in the sand; we don’t now.”

Total security

To the list of key UK expertise and capabilities, Lord West also cites the integration of various individual capabilities: “Total security solutions are really, really important.”

Lord West gave two examples of how integrating capabilities enables advantages. The first is monitoring a perimeter fence, through which anyone can get through given the right equipment. To counter this, it is vital that response teams can be sent quickly to the actual or attempted breach via a range of sensors that have been netted together to alert operators and provide a single operation picture of the incident.

Secondly, he pointed to airport security, which relates directly to recent work undertaken by the Home O¬ffice on behavioural science and human factors in the fight against counter-terrorism.

“As a car arrives at the concourse of the airport, through automatic number plate recognition we know whether that car matches its number plate and we know where it has come from. When people get out and behave slightly differently, they are immediately flagged up by the [automated behavioural science and human factors] system to go through checks to swab them for explosives. We don’t want to do that for every passenger, because otherwise we are doing the terrorists’ job for them. If you can identify the few people you think are worth looking at then you have [saved] a lot of work. These measures have to interlock; when you put them together you then get up toward the 100% [success] you are looking for, although you will never get 100%.”

Stand off detection

Different techniques are appropriate for different environments. Lord West pointed to the threat of suicide bombers and the need to detect them. “If you are manning road blocks in somewhere like Afghanistan and you think someone is coming toward you with a suicide bomb, once they get to your checkpoint, you can stop them getting through to do real damage [but still potentially killing or seriously wounding those on the checkpoint]. I want instead to be able to detect that they have an explosive vest at 100m. There has been lot of work going on to try and identify whether you can achieve that. If you can do that, you have much more security.”

Providing security overseas is not just an export opportunity for industry but it is linked to multiple facets of the UK government’s security strategy, including energy supply. Lord West said: “It’s no good just protecting Milford Haven. We have to make sure the other end is secure too. We have to talk to the country involved. We need places where we know we have safe, sure and secure supply. This work and our ability to do that totality of protection is really important.”

This nonetheless provides considerable opportunities to UK industry. It is estimated in the latest surveys that this is an industry that is going to double in size in the next few years. “When I visited countries in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere, the UK was not taking full advantage [of its security requirements], bearing in mind how amazingly good we are in this field.”

Currently the UK has only about 4% of this market. Lord West believes that there is no reason why that shouldn’t rise to the equivalent of the UK’s 19% share of the world defence market. He commented: “There is absolutely no reason why we can’t.”

In the UK, the security sector has a considerable number of SMEs which can find it difficult to market capabilities in disparate overseas markets. Lord West said: “The opportunity in most of the product segments is huge; one of the challenges is really giving small businesses the confidence to go overseas and sell their products.”

Lord West said: “What we have got to do is to encourage the building of the supply chain in this sector which is very important. We have seen it successfully done in defence; we now need it in security too.”

Guaranteeing this figure is met will by and large be affected by putting in place synergies between activities across the UK which can be brought together in partnerships between universities and business. Pointing to the UK’s continuing success in the areas of mobile phone technology and IT, Lord West said: “There is no doubt that the partnership between the academic and research world and business is one of the drivers of that.”

Innovation in the field will in part be funded from a recently established fund directed at science, engineering and life sciences. Lord West said: “In mid-2009, we produced the science and innovation strategy where we actually told academics and industry the areas that we wanted them to look at.” The first two areas were area scanning and human factors with others to follow, detailing areas in which the market to sustain investment was apparent. He added: “You have to give some indicators of where the demand is going to be; otherwise the danger is they are wasting their money.”

He added that the UK has to ensure that “all of the amazing academic and scientific skills we have don’t just disappear to other places in the world; we need to get them developed here and sold so that we are helping UK industry.” <<

Lord West, parliamentary under-secretary for security and counter-terrorism spoke to Adam Baddeley