Liquid explosives. The threat to civil aviation and the European response

This paper deals with the specific group of homemade liquid high explosives in relation to aviation security. The sudden and irrefutable focus on homemade explosives and liquid explosives in particular after the 2006 defeated attacks in London, made the aviation security community realize that the security system and equipment were not optimized for this particular kind of substances. It is now generally accepted that hydrogen peroxide based liquid explosives (HPOM) pose a terrorist threat to civil aviation. It is easy, cheap and relatively safe to make effective HPOM IEDs. It is a high explosive of increasing and serious interest to terrorists and has been used recently.