There are several changes in the terrorist threat landscape over the past year, including new threats to aviation security, the head of the U.S. agency responsible for leading the nation’s counter-terrorism efforts said on Wednesday.

There has been a “resurgence of aviation threats,” in the past year, “reaching a level of concern we in the intelligence community have not faced since Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s printer package plot of 2010,” Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC), told a Senate panel.

Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Photo: NCTC
Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Photo: NCTC

The 2010 plot originated with bombs placed inside of computer printers that were shipped on aircraft that departed from Yemen with the ultimate destination of the packages being the U.S. The bombs were timed to explode aboard the planes over or near the U.S. The plot was foiled due to a tip from Saudi intelligence authorities but the bombs were so sophisticated that one of the packages, after being removed from a cargo plane, was initially cleared by British security officials before further testing revealed that it was a bomb.

Rasmussen pointed a plot in Australia in July that failed because the carry-on bag that the bomb was inside of was over the airline’s weight limit for luggage inside the cabin. Groups aligned with both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda “have demonstrated a continued capability to conduct aviation attacks,” he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during its annual hearing to assess threats to the homeland.

Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), chairman of a House Homeland Security panel on transportation security, said on Tuesday at hearing that it was just “good luck” that the Australian plot failed.

“The Australians called this one of the most sophisticated plants that has ever been attempted on Australian soil,” Katko said in his opening remarks. The attack involved Islamic State operatives sending the bomb components via a plane from Turkey to Australia.

Successful and unsuccessful plots against the aviation system show three things, Rasmussen said during the Senate hearing. One is that “Western aviation” remains a “persistent focus of terrorists.” Second is that terrorists are monitoring “security procedures” to find vulnerabilities. Last, he said, is that terrorists change their tactics to defeat these procedures.

“It’s for these reasons that aviation related threats have long been, and will remain, at or near the top of the list of things we worry about,” Rasmussen said. The NCTC is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Elaine Duke, acting secretary of Homeland Security, told the committee that overall the threat from terrorism facing the U.S. is equal to or greater than it was 16 years ago when the country was attacked on Sept. 11. Large scale attacks are harder to do but changing technology have made it easier to recruit and radicalize terrorists globally, she said.

Rasmussen also highlighted other changes related to terrorist threats in the past year. One is that even though the Islamic State continues to lose territory in Iraq and Syria, its battlefield defeats haven’t diminished its ability to inspire attacks elsewhere. There have to be more than just military victories to eliminate the threat posed by the Islamic State, he said, adding it’s going to take time to reduce the threat.

Al Qaeda also remains a “strikingly resilient” threat, Rasmussen said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said there are about 1,000 open investigations involving domestic terrorism, referring to white supremacist-type groups. He later told the panel that the FBI has investigations into 1,000 cases of homegrown terrorism, which typically refer to threats inspired or directed by foreign terrorist groups like the Islamic State.

In her written remarks, Duke mentioned passage by the House in July of a bill to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and provide the department with new and updated authorities. She called on the Senate to also approve the legislation.

Duke in her prepared statement also said that DHS needs authorities counter threats from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to the homeland, pointing to the Islamic State’s successful use of the technology in conflict zones and attempts by “aspiring terrorists” to use UAS elsewhere.

DHS needs to be able to “interdict the “signals” from the UAS systems to determine if one is a threat or not, Duke said during the hearing in response to a question from Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), whose state hosts a test site for developing UAS for operations in the national airspace.

“We are seeing an increased use of drones,” Duke said. “They could be for surveillance, they could be for bringing illicit materials, or they could be for acting violence.” The main area of concern is around border states, she added.

Wray said that given the use of UAS by terrorists overseas, “I think the expectation is that it’s coming here imminently.” These systems are easy to acquire and operate yet difficult to “disrupt and monitor,” he said.

Rasmussen said the intelligence community has provided assessments of the potential UAS threat to state and local governments and that the federal government now has a “community of experts” examining how UAS threats can be thwarted. He wasn’t sure who was leading this effort.