Fed: Sky marshals carrying special ammo

AAP General News (Australia)
12-31-2003
Fed: Sky marshals carrying special ammo

By Don Woolford

CANBERRA, Dec 31 AAP - Australian sky marshals carry special ammunition designed to
break up without piercing a plane's wall.

The bullets should also avoid causing massive injuries to people, government sources said today.

Justice Minister Chris Ellison said Australia's covert and highly trained marshals
were armed with modified ammunition when explaining why Australia was ahead of the game
internationally in air security.

The marshals, or Air Security Officers, were armed with high-frangibility ammunition
specifically designed for aircraft use, with bullets designed to break up on impact with
a solid object and not pierce the plane's skin.

However the fragments would not ricochet, putting people near the point of impact at risk.

Nor, unlike soft-nosed bullets, would they expand on hitting a body, greatly aggravating
the wound, the government said.

Senator Ellison told radio station 2UE that other countries were coming to study Australia's
air security system, which has been running domestically for two years and has started
internationally with Qantas flights to Singapore.

He hoped an agreement on using marshals on American flights would be finalised with
the United States early in the New Year.

While Qantas and Virgin provide free seats for marshals on domestic flights, the government
and Qantas were sharing equally the cost of international seats.

Senator Ellison said this should not necessarily mean a fare increase.

"I think it's something that can be absorbed, but that's a matter for Qantas," he said.

Senator Ellison rejected criticism that the emphasis should be on ground rather than
in-air security.

He said the government had posted an extra 150 Australian Protective Service officers
at airports and would station more than 20 Australian Federal Police officers at them
to coordinate the response to any incident.

The government and the CSIRO were trialling state-of-the-art neutron-scanning technology
which would detect explosive substances and drugs.

"We want to develop that so you don't get false alarms over facial creams and similar
substances," he said.

Senator Ellison said he hoped that one day the $18.5 million a year marshal program
would no longer be needed.

"But I think the threat will be there for some time," he said.

AAP dw/cbs/de

KEYWORD: TERROR MARSHALS AMMO

2003 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.