RAE Systems in coal-mine safety China venture

Remember the concept “spill-over”? During the cold war, pro-defense economistsargued that the vast investments the United States was making in defense R&D would be beneficial, rather than harmful, to the U.S. econmoy because many of the solutions and products developed for defense purposes would be suitable, with but few modifications, for the civilian market (not all economists agreed: Columbia University’s Seymour Melman, for one, made a name for himself as a critic of that view). Whether or not we agree with the more sweeping variant of the calim, it is clear that some products and solutions developed for the homeland security market now find their way to non-security sectors of the economy. CyberTracker, for example, may be used by the authorities to track suspicious vehicles—or by worried parents to track their teen-age kids’ on a Friday night; zNose may be used to detect a biological orchemical teror attack, or to detect industrial pollutants in rivers. There are many more examples.

It is thus not entirely surprising to learn that RAE Systems (AMEX: RAE), a leading developer and manufacturer of multi-sensor chemical and radiation detection monitors for homeland security applications, has formed a China joint venture company, RAE Coal Mine Safety Instruments (Fushun) Co., Ltd. The new company will specialize in developing coal mine safety instruments and solutions. China, by the way, leads the world in coal-mine accidents.

-read more at company Web site