Air Force deploys mobile bioweapons detection labs

During Colin Powell’s fateful pre-war presentation to the United Nations, among his key claims was that the Iraqi government was using mobile weapons labs to evade United Nations inspection teams. That proved incorrect (or, as some might say, a lie) but it may have inadvertently served as inspiration to American military planners. At a ceremony this week at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, the U.S. Air Force unveiled a mobile bioweapons detection van known as the Laboratory Response Team Trailer. Equipped with $100,000 in equipment, the trailer has the ability to quickly identify fourteen biological agents without the laborious process of sending samples to an established laboratory. “We could isolate or really limit the affected regions. If we could get our crew in there, get testing as fast as possible, we could possibly limit any outbreak,” said Lt. James Clark, chief of laboratory services for McConnell’s 22nd Medical Group. The trailers themselves are manufactured by Derby, Kansas-based Derby Trailer Technologies.

-read more in this AP report