Iraq Spent $85 Million Useless Bomb Detectors
January 22nd, 2010Via: BBC:
A BBC Newsnight investigation has found that a so-called “bomb detector”, thousands of which have been sold to Iraq, cannot possibly work.
Leading explosives expert Sidney Alford told Newsnight the sale of the ADE-651 was “absolutely immoral”.
“This type of equipment does not work,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind betting that lives have been lost as a consequence.”
Questions have been raised over the ADE-651, following three recent co-ordinated waves of bombings in Baghdad.
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Anti-theft tag inside
Claims of such almost magical technical abilities would almost be comic, if the potential consequences were not so serious.
Newsnight obtained a set of cards for the ADE-651 and took them to Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory where Dr Markus Kuhn dissected a card supposed to detect TNT.
It contained nothing but the type of anti-theft tag used to prevent stealing in high street stores.
Dr Kuhn said it was “impossible” that it could detect anything at all and that the card had “absolutely nothing to do with the detection of TNT”.
“There is nothing to program in these cards. There is no memory. There is no microcontroller. There is no way any form of information can be stored,” he added.
Research Credit: JH
Cha-ching! “Incompetence” comes through again!