CBRNe News February 2009
Gwyn Winfield examines the latest news in the world of CBRNE
Goodbye to old friends
Spring seems to be the time for everything changing -out with the old, in with the new. In the UK Colonel Ian Harris will be stepping down as DEC CBRN, and the post itself will be retired. In line with ‘Head Office Streamlining’ (always an ominous phrase) DEC Special Projects and DEC CBRN will be combined to form SP and CBRN, yet won’t be a DEC - oh no! Now they will be Heads of Capability (HOCs - despite the recession the acronym monkeys are hard at work!) and SROs (Senior Responsible Officers). HOC SP&CBRN, will have a Deputy Head CBRN - Group Captain Paul Burt, an established CBRN stalwart - who is likely to still remain as the Chairman of JCG CBRN in Nato.
We also bid a fond farewell to Major General Steve Reeves, who has been the cornerstone of US CBRN procurement for more years than most of us can remember. Also to Colonel Rick Barker, head of Canadian procurement, who is also stepping down in July.
Finally, and I am sure he will be pleased to be in such august company, Richard Le Fleming, from Siemens Radiation Monitoring, is retiring, a fixture and fitting of the UK CBRN/NBC scene. We wish them all well!
Product Watch
Days out
New training company, Hotzone Solutions, announced their open days at Vyskov in August. As well as closed partner days, there are open days that interested parties can apply for on the 27-28th August. There will be a tour of the facility and a chance to understand exactly what training solutions are on offer. Interested parties should register their interest on www.hotzonesolutions.com for more updates.
Ultra acquire Siemens
After Siemens sold off their dosimetry business to Thermo it always seemed ripe for something happening - too thin a product portfolio - and that has happened, with the acquisition of Siemens Radiation Monitoring by Ultra Electronics. Ultra have always been canny procurers, cornering markets like sonar buoys, and their purchase of Audiopack in July 2005 showed an interest in CBRN. The purchase of the manufacturer of ANV-S2 will fit nicely into into both this business and also their naval (and vehicle) business - which is wear a great many of Ultra’s customers reside.
Cheap cheap!
Cristanini have the solution for you in these financially straitened times! They have worked out the amount of BX24 needed to decontaminate one gramme of VX per m2 is only ninety cents! In fact, they go on to prove that if you take the Nato Stanag (4360-4477) it brings the cost out at 0.018 Euros!
Back in the EU - RS(sr)
Bad puns aside, RS Decon have been cleared for distribution within the EU’s 27 member nations. It has been passed by the EU and received the CE mark, which will be bad news for European skin decon manufacturer OWR. RS Decon has also recently been passed for release in Australia and coming on the back of their recent US success it seems unlikely that anyone will be able to stop their rise.
Approval for Altair
The Altair 4 Multigas detector has received EU toxic gas approval as compliant for H2S and CO gas. As well as detecting LEL, CO, H2S and O2 it is the only gas detector with a motion alert for when the user becomes disabled.
In a P’s eye
Portendo launched their new explosive detector at the London based Counter Terror Expo in February. P eye, a standoff explosive detector, uses raman spectroscopy to be able to detect substances up to 50 metres. Previously the only commercial standoff raman belonged to ITT, that was subject to strict ITAR, so this might well be a lucrative market for the Swedish company.
Training day
Argon Electronics announced the delivery of 50 Camsim, AP2C-sim, S4PE-sim, LCD3.2E-sim to the Swedish Armed forces. All the detectors are identical to the original detectors and the Swedes are the first recipients of the new AP2C-sim and LCD3.2E-sim. The contract also includes options for the Hampsim-P, the Hapsite simulator, and PlumeSim, their field exercise, remote, wide area training system.
Follow on
Avon Protection announced another follow on order from the US DoD for their JSGPM, M50 respirator. This order is for an additional 100,000 masks in 2009 and an additional 61,000 in 2010 and is worth $34.4 million.
New Product
Dycor have announced the release of their new Compact Aerosol Test System (CATS). This a portable testing and validation system for biological detection and sampling systems in an operating environment. This means that detectors can be validated against ambient and simulants in the field environment of the users choice.
Very interesting...
Aeolus Pharmaceuticals announced that they have begun testing a compound which has shown efficacy in countering the effect of mustard and radiation on the skin. Their AEOL 10150 has so far been successful on animals and the new testing is part funded by the National Institute of Health Counter ACT program.
Building interoperability
Solace Systems announced that the DHS is helping drive support for their Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE: does someone have an acronym monkey they can lend them?). The system is set up to allow secure communication between government agencies and to allow data input from a range of sensors.
Threat Watch
Tiger, Tiger...
Just what is going on with LTTE - Tamil Tigers – and chemical weapons? Sri Lankan official news wires have been buzzing with suggestions that the LTTE used chemical ‘choking’ weapons and that they have found chemical weapons (for example in the Chalai bund). The veracity of these ‘facts’ has to be questioned due to the lack of international interest in this issue. At time of writing it looks as if Government forces have committed a clean sweep of tamil areas –at considerable loss to civilian life - presumably if there had been any release, even if it was not fatal, the news broadcasts would have been full of it. Suffice to say CBRNe World’s requests for informationfrom the Sri Lankan Army have not resulted in any detail.
Fancy an air swim?
Pool workers in LA decided that the best way to dispose of chlorine and muriatic acid from the roof top pool was to pour them down the drain. Sadly the resulting mixture seeped out of the pipes and caused a major panic near a Metro station on Martin Luther King day. A Deputy experienced a burning sensation in his lungs and eyes and was joined by a number of other people vomiting and becoming overcome with fumes.
Fancy a day off school?
In a defeat for common sense and child psychology, a school in Albuquerque was shut for a day after a white powder incident. Ten people were tested after a letter with white powder was opened by Taft Middle School, the responding four fire-fighters called in back-up from state police and the WMD CST. The ten people that were ‘quarantined’ were five school employees, four firefighters and a sheriff’s deputy. ‘So Kids, next time you have an exam that you just can’t pass, don’t swot for it, Homepride it!’
Not bubo-tastic
As suspected, in the last news, the sensational story of ‘BLACK DEATH’ killing 40 Al Qaeda scientists has been discounted by the Algerian Ministry of Health. The MoH issued a statement stating that not only had no-one died, but that there had not been plague in the country since 2003! Strangely this story didn’t sell quite as many newspapers.
Sleeps with the fishes?
The mind boggles. FBI officials were called into a building in Washington DC in February where a ‘homeland security’ worker received a white powder envelope. Not only, however, was there white powder in the envelope, but also... a dead fish [da-da-dah!] Whether there will now be a rash of white powder combined with high ph substances (so called ‘salt n’ vinegar’) attacks combined with piscine and French potato products is not known. People who receive a fish in an envelope should keep calm, and decontaminate the product with some hot oil, and a slice of lemon.
God bless the American Idiot
As usual the greatest threat of a CBRN device being used in the US comes not from outside the US, not even from fundamentalists, but lone nuts. James Cummings, a Maine resident shot dead by his much abused wife, was found to be a massive Hitler fan and had also collected containers of hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal themite, aluminium powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon - now there’s a bang that will attract attention. Cummings, who had a annual trust fund income of 10 million, was linked to white supremacist groups and was ‘very upset’ when Obama was elected as President...
While the Public Safety Commissioner played down the find and stated that the material was not enough to pose a threat to the community, any explosion that sets of rad detectors will get international coverage and end in draconian regulation. Disappointingly Amber Cummings has not been seen as a potential saviour of the US way of life, but the accused in a murder case.
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