San Diego shows promise as homeland security incubator

Sunny San Diego is known for its beaches, expensive housing, and disgraced congressman Randy Cunningham. Lesser known in the region’s growing homeland security industry, a natural fit for a city just a few miles from both the Mexican border and the critical ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Bolstered by a large number of nearby universities, the region is now home to the Center for Commercialization of Advanced Technology, Southern California, an academic, industry, and government partnership funded by the Pentagon and administered by the state universities at San Diego and San Bernardino. The result is a number of small companies hoping to make it big in the security market. We take a look at a two promising comers:

BULLET POINTS

Daylight Solutions, an expert in expert in tunable, mid-IR lasers, offers a hand-held laser trace explosive detection system that measures the reaction of molecules to laser light. The device resembled metal detection wands and would be deployed to airports and other sensitive areas to prevent bomb attacks. It can even detect “molecules of interest” in a bottle of water. This downsized approach to trace explosives may be just the thing to replace the bulky, unreliable puffer machines much in the news these days, especially if it can handle liquid explosives as well. Of course, an all-in-one metal detector/trace explosives detector wand would be even better, but that may be asking too much of this Poway, California-based company. Tim Day, Daylight Solutions’ chief executive, said that demand for the wands could be as many as 10,000 units per year, at an esimated cost of about $1,000 per unit.

Carlsbad, California-based Seacoast Science has a name befitting the region’s marine sciences tradition, but its interest is in chemical sensor and detectors, not humpback whales. “Our biggest competition is a dog’s nose,” said Todd Milsna, Seacoast Science’s president. “That’s what we’re trying to replicate.” The company’s latest offering is a “volitaile organic chemical detector” capable of identifying mustard gas, sarin and acetone. Acetone, readers may recall, was one of the bomb components used in last summer’s London subway bombings. We wish Seacoast all possible successes, not because of any personal bias but because repeated efforts by other companies to create similar products have not lived up to expectation. “The current technology is not operationally viable,” DHS spokesman Christopher Kelley said recently. “There are shortfalls in processing speed, reliability and false alarms that need to be evaluated.”

-read more in James Gildden’s Los Angeles Times report ; company Websites Daylight Solutions; Seacoast Science