If you want to do some sort of worth calculation on the TSA using cost of a terrorist attack, then you have to break it down by attack type. Damage done by the attack and probability of success both must be considered. Binary liquid bomb attacks are extraordinarily unlikely, extraordinarily hard to do successfully, and cause relatively little damage.
Terrorists are interested in airplanes for two reasons: they can be hijacked to great effectiveness (not anymore), and they know we react irrationally to threats to airplanes (this is what we should seek to fix). With both of these fixed, the threat terrorists pose to airplanes would be no more notable than the threat they pose to any other modestly sized group of people.
Re: a dozen terrorists with sufficient weapons/tools
Even assuming they could get these weapons/tools past pre-9/11 security, which is very doubtful, the chances of it working out the way they wanted are still absurdly small. What pilot would not fly the plane straight into the ground if the locked cockpit door was actually being breached? People know that hijackings are not survivable anymore. You are either killed or someone sits on a terrorists for a few hours, there aren't any other outcomes.
A dozen men with weapons sufficient to hold off an entire plane can do plenty of damage on the ground, and they don't even need to walk through a metal detector to do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks Why bother having a chance to kill a few hundred people on a plane when you can do the same on the ground?
Yet we don't see either being attempted...
Frankly, all of these threat scenarios are fantasies.
I think it was over 2 years ago but a guy on reddit pointed out that terrorists would obviously target the weakest link. He said something on the lines that instead of trying to hijack airplanes they'd just go blow up some mall or something. If my memory serves me well, I think they put a tracker on him for that comment.
Oh yeah, I remember that. I assume I'm already on plenty of watchlists for being moderately vocal about thinking the entire situation is bullshit. Maybe it's time I look under my car again.
The funny thing is I'm neither American nor in the USA, but I'm sure they've still got some intel on me (since USCIS does legally have my records anyway).
Terrorists are interested in airplanes for two reasons: they can be hijacked to great effectiveness (not anymore), and they know we react irrationally to threats to airplanes (this is what we should seek to fix). With both of these fixed, the threat terrorists pose to airplanes would be no more notable than the threat they pose to any other modestly sized group of people.
Re: a dozen terrorists with sufficient weapons/tools
Even assuming they could get these weapons/tools past pre-9/11 security, which is very doubtful, the chances of it working out the way they wanted are still absurdly small. What pilot would not fly the plane straight into the ground if the locked cockpit door was actually being breached? People know that hijackings are not survivable anymore. You are either killed or someone sits on a terrorists for a few hours, there aren't any other outcomes.
A dozen men with weapons sufficient to hold off an entire plane can do plenty of damage on the ground, and they don't even need to walk through a metal detector to do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks Why bother having a chance to kill a few hundred people on a plane when you can do the same on the ground?
Yet we don't see either being attempted...
Frankly, all of these threat scenarios are fantasies.