Operation Pager Could Be a Disaster for Civil Aviation (Opinion)

A few days ago, an unnamed organization remotely detonated thousands of Hezbollah pagers. Putting aside the moral aspects of this operation, in my opinion, what happened could cause major problems for civil aviation around the world.

Lebanon is a poor country, of course, but it is not the DPRK, and people fly there and back quite well. Beirut airport is operational, receiving dozens of flights a day. That is, there is a very non-zero chance that there were members of Hezbollah on board the planes departing from Beirut airport.

Furthermore, we know that the pagers remained undetected for months. If none of these thousands of owners traveled with a pager/radio abroad, then we can breathe a sigh of relief….

But, as the classic sang, what if… not? Then it turns out that one or more people passed the inspection and were not detected. And they know it! And, unfortunately, not only them.

There is a well-known hypothesis of the Theater of Security (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_of_security). Its essence is that the measures taken in the field of security may not be as effective as they are estimated by ordinary people. However, as long as this remains a secret, it is not a problem. The very fact of the existence of security measures scares off potential intruders and gives peace of mind to millions of air passengers.

Sometimes information about what is possible/impossible can be more valuable than the technology itself. There is a popular expression (I was unable to find out its original author) that “the biggest secret of the atomic bomb was not given to the spy Fuchs, but to Truman Stalin personally. That it in principle it is possible create.” Then it was just a matter of technique.

If airport scanners were ineffective, that would be a minor problem in general. But now the entire Arab world could find out. And that's it. real problem.