CBRNe News June 2007
Gwyn Winfield examines the latest news in the world of CBRNE
Product Watch
Gothenburg wrap up
As was expected Gothenburg saw a great deal of new toys unwrapped at the symposium. Bruker Daltonics celebrated the birth of the E2M (Environmental, Emergency Mass Spectrometer) with a champagne reception. This is the successor to their EM640 and Viking GC/MS and while not man-portable, a la Hapsite (or even the new Hapsite Viper, also unveiled at the show) it is a significant improvement in terms of performance and physical envelope. Blucher allowed you to ogle their new IDZ battlesuit from behind safety glass – all that was missing was the red cordon rope.
This is the suit for the next generation German future soldier, and has integrated protection into normal battlesuit weight and heat limits. Jenoptik were showing off their new Approve-B, a PCR and protein analysis biodetector for mobile labs and EDS had a new product Real-Time Medical Surveillance for syndromic surveillance.
There were also improvements in existing product lines; Optimetrics released the latest version of their NBC Warn software to include civil forces to allow an integrated operational picture, while Smiths Detection launched the successor to their Bioseeq biological detector, the Bioseeq Plus. This is only mentioning a few of the products that caught the editor’s eye, if you weren’t there, you missed out!
Stop me and read one
June will see CBRNe World at the CRTI conference in Canada, the Bio-Terrorism Symposium in Ankara, Defence and Homeland Security in Israel and the Joint CBRN Conference in Fort Leonard Wood. July will see CBRNe World also at International CBRN Symposium in Germany, the Force Protection Exhibition and Demo in the US and then IABTI at the end of the month, also in the US.
Discovering new devices
The second week of June will be an opportunity for the people at MREL to bask in their fifteen minutes of fame with the arrival of the Discovery Channel’s hit show ‘Future Weapons.’ The show will be looking at the Aqua Ram range of tactical disrupters (more information can be found in the Summer edition of CBRNe World). This will be the first visit of the show to Canada and the team hope that the show, which will be aired in the new season, will go with a bang.
Civil Partnership
KeTech Detection announced the formation two new partnerships. The first is a manufacturing and trading partnership with Infrared Security Solutions. Ketech see this as fitting into their portfolio of chemical and explosive detection devices and offering a wider choice to governmental agencies. ISS is a relative newcomer to the field, only being formed in 2005 and produce a Thermal Imaging Viewer, a monocular IR sight and other image intensifiers.
With CBRNE being fitted into more critical infrastructure protection programmes there will be more emphasis on CBRN as part of a system of systems with imaging devices, yet Ketech will have to go a bit further before they can take on Smiths Detection’s dominance. The second is an agreement to represent the Chinese company, Nuctech, in the UK. Nuctech were present at the ISNR show in London in December 2006 and raised equal amounts of astonishment and scepticism with their range of products, which spans suspicious liquids identification through to cargo and container inspection.
The 7 signs of decontamination
The US DoD awarded skin decontamination manufacturer’s EZEM a $5.07 million order for the delivery of both training and operational RSDL packages. This follows the decision in March to award EZEM a Milestone C which paved the way for the contract. RSDL is a broad spectrum skin decontaminant to remove or neutralise CWA and T2 toxins from the skin. EZEM see this as the start of further orders of RSDL for the US military, to join the Canadian military and civil responder customers
HMS Continuous
Hazard Management Solutions add to their deluge of training awards with another €1.5 contract to provide counter-IED training to Nato. It will be delivered over a year, with options for another two years. With the insurgency seeing no signs of abating it is not likely to be the last we’ll be hearing from HMS in the news pages!
A room with a RADView
US Company RADeCO Inc launched their new dosimeter, the Radview PD. It gives immediate visual detection of gamma, x-ray and beta, measures dose rate up to 100 rads and works up to 62 degrees Celsius. They see this as replacing the Direct Reading Dosimeter with its need to look down the barrel and lower temperature range. Equally they feel that users of electronic dosimeters will benefit from its lower cost of ownership and far smaller size envelope. The Radview is designed to fit into a normal wallet (ie. It is credit card size), or to be worn on the tunic and requires little to no training.
Product Watch
TB or not TB
Divorce lawyer Andrew Speaker suddenly found himself in the middle of a media tornado in May when he disregarded CDC advice and travelled Europe and returned to the US with Extensively Drug Resistant (XDR) TB. While the case can be seen as either the apogee of selfishness, or a calculated risk, what it has shown is the inability of the US to effectively deal with the situation.
CDC warned Speaker on May 21 not to fly into the US on a commercial airliner, so to avoid being on the no-fly list, he flew from Prague into Canada and drove across the border. He was then stopped at the border by a computer alert, which the official disregarded as Speaker looked ‘healthy.’ He then checked himself into a New York Hospital and is moved from there to CDC in Atlanta and finally the specialist TB hospital in Denver. Meanwhile the US and world media goes into overdrive to start terrifying anyone who might have flown with him, stood next to him on an escalator or even been within the same zip code.
Currently most US news websites are divided between whether he should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail or, alternatively, dropped in a hole in the ground once he has paid for the treatment and tests of all suspected individuals.
This raises a number of questions, where do he contract the disease, why did the government allow such a media firestorm (concerns over the cutting of CDC's budget?), why was he let back into the country when he should have been picked up? It is the last question, sadly, that has had the most attention. The Chairman of the US House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, is now investigating the whole debacle.
How do I amuse you?
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the UK of ‘pure foolishness’ if they thought that Russia would be able to hand over the leading suspect in the Litivinenko murder inquiry. He stated that Russia’s constitution would not allow him to be extradited under Article 6 of the 1957 Council of Europe European Convention on Extradition. Instead he has helpfully offered for the UK to send all the evidence over to Russia and a fair trial could be helped there. Lugovoi will now turn into a bone for the international community to chew over whenever it wants to needle the Russians, the US were quick to use it for just that purpose.
With an election coming up the lat thing that Putin can be seen to look is weak and if Litvinenko’s claims were correct – that Putin, rather than Chechens, was complicit in the Moscow bombings – it would seem out of character for there to be any change in this policy. What it also shows is that the ex-KGB (does anyone ever really become ex-KGB, CIA or MI6?) Lugovoi is well protected by his friends – though this might not last for ever.
Chitter-chatter
June saw London police doing security spot checks on petrol and chemical tankers that could be turned into VBCIED (Vehicle borne chemical IEDs). The police were monitoring lorries on key routes into London amid concerns that chemical copycat attacks might take place.
While this is clearly a visible deterrent, I would also suggest that there has been some intelligence chatter that has brought this new degree of awareness. Quite what they will do, other than frighten the amateur, is not known, unless they manage to stop someone with a ‘Death to the Infidel’ t-shirt, as there are few restrictions and background checks on heavy goods vehicle drivers in the UK.
Have I had my hardpad inoculation?
Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany recently announced that they had managed to alter the DNA of a bacterium to allow it to infect a species it could not usually impact on. Scientists managed to tinker with listeriosis, a food borne illness in humans, to allow it to infect mice, an animal it otherwise would have no ability to infect. The obvious fear is that this could mean that animal diseases could be tweaked to infect humans, while mange and distemper might not trouble too much, a more potent foot and mouth would not be a pretty sight. The research now published brings this likelihood just that little bit closer.
More chlorine
Attacks in May and June using chlorine have become more prevalent, suggesting that chlorine has lost its shock factor and become more of a staple weapon in the arsenal. So far the attacks have shown the same lack of finesse that has made their other attacks notable.
What is perhaps more interesting is that Centcom is now playing down the chlorine threat, presumably in an attempt to deny coverage which would otherwise increase the attraction of these weapons. CBRNe World has now waited three months for answer to our questions and received nothing other than ‘we’ll get back to you, and an attack on the 3rd June was reported by Centcom as “off colour smoke” that caused “minor respiratory irritations and watery eyes” – if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
Please forward any items for consideration in this section to the editor, Gwyn Winfield This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it