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Like other technology suppliers that work with the US Transportation Security Administration, X-ray equipment manufacturer Rapiscan Systems has sold the TSA more products for baggage than boxes. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company has a contract to fill up to $97 million of TSA orders for carry-on baggage screening machines with advanced multi-view technology and its devices are at US airport passenger checkpoints across the nation.

The cargo side of Rapiscan's TSA business is leaner, however. The federal agency this year began testing two Rapiscan cargo screening systems already in use at airports outside the United States, one for large boxes, one for pallet loads of boxes.

"We have been working with the TSA over the past six months or so as it relates to potential technology systems that could be used for air cargo screening," said Peter Modica, Rapiscan's vice president of government programs. "They are coming to our facilities to test a pallet-screening system."

As far as how those tests are progressing, said Modica, "That's for the agency to comment on."

As airlines, forwarders and especially shippers have learned, security is a touchy subject. TSA faces challenging deadlines for broadening its inspection of cargo bound for the bellies of passenger aircraft. Federal law requires that TSA inspect at least 50 percent of all cargo on US passenger flights by February 2009 and 100 percent by August 2010. But there remains sharp disagreement on the law and what TSA and the cargo business must do to meet those deadlines.

While TSA plans to throw more inspectors and canine teams at airport checkpoints ahead of the February 2009 deadline, technology also is expected to play a big role in the agency's stepped-up inspection regimen.