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Running Head: UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

United States Air Marshals: Effective or Extra Weight?

David J. Noorman

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

Abstract

This report provides research and analysis regarding whether or not the United States Federal Air

Marshal Service [FAMS] is effective at stopping airborne terrorist attacks on commercial aircraft

and is intended for The United States House Budget Committee because of its oversight on

funding the FAMS through taxpayer dollars. Agents are burdened by human factors such as

fatigue and alcohol abuse, lack of enough agents to adequately provide coverage to commercial

flights, and no instances of agents stopping attacks, which means the agency cannot statistically

evaluate its effectiveness. The purpose of this report is to evaluate whether or not the U.S.

Federal Air Marshal Service is effective at stopping airborne terrorist attacks. Based on the

findings, the House Budget Committee should instruct the Transportation Security

Administration to begin researching for alternatives to the Federal Air Marshal Service.
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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures………………………………………………………………...

………..4

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….…….5

Methodology………………………………………………………………………………………6

Results of Study…………………………………………………………..……………………..7-9

Agents are burdened by human factors……………………………………………………7

There are not enough

agents……………………………………………………………….8

The FAMS lacks evidence of stopping

threats…………………………………………….9

Discussion of Results……………………………………………………………...………….10-12

Agents are burdened by human

factors…………………………………………………...10

There are not enough

agents……………………………………………………………...11

The FAMS lacks evidence of stopping threats……………………………………..…11-

12

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...…..13

Glossary………………………………………………………………………………………….14

References……………………………………………………………………………..……..15-16
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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

List of Tables and Figures

Figure 1: Performance vs. hours of wakefulness scatterplot………………………………….……

Figure 2: Boeing 737-700 (737) domestic seat

map……………………………………………….8
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Introduction

The United States Federal Air Marshal Service is a security measure used to prevent

airborne terrorist attacks like the ones that devastated the entire nation on September 11, 2001.

After the 9/11 attacks, there was a substantial increase in aviation safety, and the agency grew

from approximately 30 agents to thousands of agents deployed on United States commercial

airliners armed with firearms to eliminate any attacker. While working, agents are assigned to

long and irregular shifts with limited human interaction (Bagget, 2004), and the Federal Air

Marshal Service is generally assumed as a necessary program to defend against threats. Despite

this belief, however, between 1990 and 2011, terrorism accounted for only 15 percent of all U.S.

aircraft accidents involving a part 121 air carrier (Oster, Strong & Zorn, 2013). Additionally, the

Federal Air Marshal Service is a heavily funded aviation security measure used to counter

terrorist threats. As of 2014, the Federal Air Marshal Service had a total annual budget of 805

billion dollars (Black & Devine, 2015). This government funding goes towards a program

originally designed to prevent unauthorized access to the flight deck of commercial aircraft but

has now evolved to claim it can defuse explosive devices aboard aircraft as well (Stewart &

Mueller, 2017). Since the FAMS is such a heavily funded program tasked with massive

responsibility, it is necessary to evaluate the agencies effectiveness in order to provide the best

protection possible for commercial aircraft. This report will include a Methodology, Results of

Study, Discussion of Results, and Conclusion.

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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

Methodology

Several methods were used to gather credible information for this report. The Embry-

Riddle Aeronautical University Hunt Library was the primary medium for gathering information.

The EAGLEsearch function was used to quickly find relevant information. First, a search was

completed for “federal air marshal service” which brought up several excellent sources, and

filters such as full text online, scholarly and peer reviewed, book/ebook, and journal article were

enabled to ensure only accurate and credible information was used throughout the report. In

addition to the Hunt Library, the Google search engine was used to find several online

newspaper articles and sleep deprivation information by entering “federal air marshal service” as

well as “effects of sleep deprivation” in the search bar. All of these measures were used to

adequately find information for this report.

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Results of Study

Agents are burdened by human factors.

The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has an immense problem with the physical and

mental readiness of their agents tasked with performing critical job functions while flying. While

in flight, physical and mental readiness is burdened by both fatigue and alcohol abuse. A now

classified sleep study found that 75 percent of FAMS agents were sleep deficient on domestic

flights and 84 percent of agents were sleep deficient on international flights, concluding that“the

acute and chronic lack of sleep substantially degrades a Federal Air Marshal's ability to react and

think quickly” (Black & Devine, 2015). The typical adult needs seven to eight hours of sleep

nightly or else they could suffer from sleep deprivation. There are four main causes for sleep

deprivation: voluntary behavior, personal obligations, work hours, and medical problems. Once

sleep deprivation has onset, numerous symptoms can occur including reduced vigilance, longer

reaction times, lack of coordination, and poor decision

making (American Academy of Sleep Medicine [AASM],

2008). Furthermore, “a sleep-deprived person is likely to fall

asleep when forced to sit still in a quiet or monotonous

situation, such as during a meeting or class” (ASSM, 2008).

As seen in Figure 1, an individual’s performance degrades Figure 1: Performance vs. hours of

wakefulness scatterplot (Dawson &
Reid, 1997)
with increased time spent awake. After 11 hours of

wakefulness, mean relative performance level is 1.04, and after 24 hours it reduces to just 0.94

(Dawson & Reid, 1997).

In addition to fatigue, alcohol abuse has been widely reported among FAMS agents. For

example, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) fired eight Federal Air Marshals for
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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

drinking alcohol while being considered on duty. None of the agents had scheduled flights;

however, they had completed a training exercise that day (Orr, 2012). In fact, due to the known

alcohol abuse problem within the FAMS, the TSA now monitors the sobriety of agents arriving

at airports for their assigned flights (Nixon, 2018).

There are not enough agents.

The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) doesn’t provide protection for almost any

commercial flight within the United States. Estimates show that Federal Air

Marshals are only on 5 percent of between 25,000 and 30,000 daily flights

with emphasis placed on flights deemed high risk. These estimates assume

there are between 2000 and 4000 active FAMS agents with seventy percent

working at a given time (Seidenstat & Splane, 2009; Stewart &

Mueller, 2017). This leaves up to 28,500 flights completely

unprotected by the FAMS every day. Because of the low

percentage of flights agents are on, the deterrence of attacks due to

an agent being onboard is likely lowered (Stewart & Mueller, 2013).

The problem is compounded if passengers and crew onboard the airplane

hesitate to confront a hijacker because they assume an air marshal is also on the

flight (Stewart & Mueller, 2017; Stewart & Mueller, 2013). This dilemma is

widely referred to within social psychology as diffusion of responsibility,

which means that while in the presence of someone else, an individual is

less likely to assume responsibility for a situation (Myers, 2013). If

Figure 2: Boeing 737-700
(737) Domestic Seat Map
one were to assume there was an agent on a threatened flight, agents (“United Seat Maps,” 2018)

could be still be ineffective at stopping an inflight bomber because agents are typically located
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near the front of the plane in first class to prevent access to the flight deck (Stewart & Mueller,

2013). As seen in Figure 2, a United Airlines 737-700 typically used for domestic flights, the

agents would be located in rows 1-3 and not in rows 4-32. (“United Seat Maps,” 2018).

The FAMS lacks evidence of stopping threats.

Although the Federal Air Marshal Service may seem like a necessity on commercial

flights, they are rarely called into action. Since air marshals have little real experience with in

flight threats, there is no evidence to suggest agents can actually stop a threat. Congressman John

J. Duncan Jr. states the FAMS “averaged one arrest each year per 1,000 marshals.” Air marshals

claim that these arrests are usually due to “rowdy passengers or immigration violations” while

aboard aircraft (as cited in Nixon, 2018). The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has been

active for several decades; however, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress

passed the Air Transportation Security Act, which called for the growth of both the size and

scope of the FAMS (Seidenstat & Splane, 2009). Over a decade and a half later, the United

States Government Accountability Office (2017) released findings that the Transportation

Security Administration (TSA) does not have any effectiveness data for the FAMS on its ability

to deter, detect, and disrupt threats. Furthermore, they issued a recommendation that “the

Administrator of TSA should explore and pursue methods to assess the deterrent effect of TSA’s

passenger aviation security countermeasures; such an effort should identify FAMS…as a top

priority to address.”
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Discussion of Results

Agents are burdened by human factors

United States Federal Air Marshals are tasked with protecting commercial aircraft from

malicious terrorist attacks; however, agents are not at optimal levels of physical and mental

readiness due to both fatigue and alcohol abuse. With reports of a large majority of agents

suffering from sleep deficiency, job performance needs to be assessed to determine if marshals

are workings at peak levels. Potential hijackings and bombings committed by terrorists can take

place within a short period of time where agent response time needs to be instantaneous, and that

does not seem possible given the sleep deprivation symptoms. Even worse, agents could

potentially make fatal errors due to lack of coordination and poor decision making while

fatigued. As shown in figure 1, with the increase in the hours awake, there is a corresponding

decrease in relative performance, which proves that air marshals are at high risk for not being

able to perform adequately, which could cause injury or death to passengers.

Another concern regarding the physical and mental readiness of agents are reports of

alcohol abuse among agents. Measuring the percentage of agents that have performed job

functions while under the influence of alcohol is nearly impossible; however, the actions the

TSA has taken by monitoring agents is a sign of the vast scope of the problem. Not only would

agents be unable to adequately perform their job functions of protecting the aircraft, they could

potentially pose a threat themselves being armed and inebriated or hung over inflight. Alcohol

abuse is also concerning since agents were fired by the TSA even though the incident was never

a threat to aircraft safety since none of them were flying, but it shows the extent of alcohol use

among agents.

There are not enough agents

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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

The concept of putting an armed federal agent aboard flights to protect against terrorism

is good in theory; however, there are not enough agents to provide coverage to a large number of

those flights. Tens of thousands of flights operate daily among United States airlines both

domestically and internationally, but having only five percent of flights protected provides

almost no security provided by the FAMS to a majority of flights. This reality leaves a giant hole

in the effectiveness of the FAMS because they are completely ineffective on ninety-five percent

of flights. For every flight without an agent, it doesn’t matter how skilled FAMS agents are at

neutralizing airborne threats since they are not there to stop it. This leaves the FAMS with a

losing combination of having few flights covered and a minimal deterrence effect. In order for

the FAMS to be more effective at preventing airborne attacks, the number of covered flights

would need to be increased dramatically. An additional problem is diffusion theory. If

passengers incorrectly believe that agents are onboard their flight, they may fail to act and the

threat will not be neutralized. This is perhaps the most dangerous side effect of the FAMS

because passengers fighting back against terrorists could be the best counter to terrorist attacks in

certain situations, and any hesitation could allow the attackers the precious seconds needed to

commit their mission. A potential solution is to make passengers more aware of how they can

help during airborne attacks and when to defer to an agent acting with lethal force. Additionally,

agents should be spread out in the aircraft rather than just rows 1-3 as shown in Figure 2.

Individuals wanting to harm an aircraft would not be conveniently sitting in the front of an

aircraft.

The FAMS lacks evidence of stopping threats

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Since the expansion of the FAMS after the passage of the Air Transportation Security

Act, it is difficult to find instances of agents called into action while on an aircraft. Actually,

there is almost zero evidence of the FAMS stopping a real threat in the past seventeen years

other than the occasional disruptive passenger. Congressman John J. Duncan Jr. is a huge critic

of the FAMS and claims the agency only arrests a single person per one thousand active agents

yearly. This would essentially mean almost every agent in the FAMS will never arrest anyone

while on a flight. It is important to note that this statistic given by the Congressman in unverified

in any formal document that has been published for the American public to read; however, given

his role in government, it can be assumed as credible. In addition to there being almost zero

arrests by the FAMS, the U.S. Government Accountability office gave a scathing review of the

agency’s ability to prove it can deter, detect, and disrupt threats. Essentially, the FAMS cannot

show it is effective at completing the missions it’s funded to complete, and it raises the question

if the FAMS is still needed since there are no longer any attacks.
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Conclusion

The Federal Air Marshal Service has served as an adequate means to prevent terrorist

attacks against commercial aircraft for several decades; however, it is now time to assess

whether or not it should continue to be a primary security measure used in flight. After

examining the program from several aspects, it is clear that the agency has never been tested, and

there is no statistical data regarding its effectiveness. Additionally, most flights do not even have

an agent on-board, and agents onboard may be unable to stop an active attack because of fatigue

and/or alcohol abuse. All three of these issues lead to questions as to whether this program

should still exist, but at the very least, it is evident that changes should be made to the FAMS to

establish itself as an effective means of stopping airborne terrorist. At this point, there is no

reason to believe the agency performs the job it is supposed to complete; therefore, the U.S.

House Budget Committee should instruct the Transportation Security Administration to begin

planning, testing, and implementing an alternative to the Federal Air Marshal Service. Thank you

for your time reading this report. If there are any questions/comments, please contact (333) 333-

3333 or [email protected].
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Glossary

Domestic Flight: A flight in which both the departure airport and the destination airport are

within the borders of the same country. Typically, these flights are under 7 hours long and are

completed with small to mid-sized aircraft.

Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS): A program designated to protecting U.S. commercial

airliners from terrorist attacks by placing armed federal agents on flights. The FAMS is a

subsidiary of the Transportation Security Administration.

International Flight: A flight in which the departure airport and the destination airport are in

two separate countries. For U.S. airlines, these flights are typically longer than 7 hours and are

completed with mid to large-sized aircraft.

Terrorist Attack: A malicious attack of violence used against a mass of people in order to incite

panic or fear among the group. Often times they are either politically or religiously motivated.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA): A large government agency tasked with

protecting the nations transportation systems from foreign and domestic attack. It is a subsidiary

to the Department of Homeland Security and it oversees the Federal Air Marshal Service.
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References

American Academy of Sleep Medicine. (2008). Sleep Deprivation [Fact sheet].

https://aasm.org/resources/factsheets/sleepdeprivation.pdf

Baggett, R. (2004). Federal air marshal program. In L.E. Sullivan, M.S. Rosen & D.M. Schulz

(Eds.), Encyclopedia of law enforcement (Vol. 1, pp. 654-654). Thousand Oaks, CA:

SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412952415.n261

Black, N. & Devine, C. (2015, August 14). Sleep-deprived, medicated, suicidal and armed:

Federal air marshals in disarray. CNN Investigations.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/us/federal-air-marshals-investigation/index.html

Dawson, D. & Reid, K. (1997). Fatigue, alcohol, and performance impairment. Nature,

318(6639), 235. https://doi.org/10.1038/40775.

Myers, D.G. (2013) Social Psychology. New York, New York: McGraw Hill.

Nixon, R. (2018, April 25). Scandals and investigations, but few arrests, for air marshals

program. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/politics/air-

marshals-scandals-investigations.html

Orr, B. (2012, June 29). TSA firing 8 air marshals for drinking on duty. CBS News.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tsa-firing-8-air-marshals-for-drinking-on-duty/

Oster C.V., Strong J.S. & Zorn C.K. (2013). Analyzing aviation safety: Problems, challenges,

opportunities. Research in transportation economics, 43(1). 148-164.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.retrec.2012.12.001

Seidenstat, P., & Splane, F. X. (Eds.). (2009). Protecting airline passengers in the age of

terrorism.
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UNITED STATES AIR MARSHALS: EFFECTIVE OR EXTRA WEIGHT?

https://books.google.com/books/about/Protecting_Airline_Passengers_in_the_Age.html?

id=6hBnJ-1hRp0C

Stewart, M.G., & Mueller, J. (2017). Are we safe enough?: Measuring and assessing aviation

security. https://www.elsevier.com/books/are-we-safe-enough/stewart/978-0-12-811475-

Stewart, M.G., & Mueller, J. (2013). Terrorism risks and cost-benefit analysis of aviation

security. Risk Analysis, 33(5), 893-908. https://doi.org/10.1111/.1539-6924.2012.01905.x

United Seat Maps. (2020). Seat Guru.

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/United_Airlines/United_Airlines_Boeing_737-

700_A.php

United States Government Accountability Office (2017). Actions needed to systematically

evaluate cost and effectiveness across security countermeasures (GAO-17-794).

https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-794