• Invasion at “Fort Knox of Uranium” raises security concerns

    The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is regarded asthe Fort Knox of Uranium, so the fact that three anti-nuclear activists, one of them an 82-year old nun, were able to breach the high-security complex’s protective fences is not reassuring; that they did so using nothing more than bolt cutters, after announcing their arrival from half-a-mile away, and that they could stay, undetected, in a highly secure area on the nuclear complex’s ground for two hours, is even more worrisome

  • Y-12 and operator error

    Three anti-nuclear activists, led by an 82-year old nun, breached the perimeter security system of the supposedly highly secure Y-2 nuclear facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where nuclear weapons components are manufactured (note that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ONRL] is not affiliated with the Y-12 National Security Complex); they then spent several hours in a secure area of the facility, leisurely spray-painting slogans on the facility’s walls – without the facility’s security staff, or the sophisticated $500 million security cameras and sensors, detecting them; to understand what happened at Y-2, we must accept that operator error is an essential problem in national security, and that the problem is pervasive and normal; the only way to deal with the operator error phenomenon is to build redundancies into the system

     

  • Long Beach Police Department purchases underwater inspection system for port

    The Port of Long Beach is the second busiest seaport in the United States and is a major gateway for trade with Asia, handling more than six million containers annually; to enhance port security, the City of Long Beach Police Department has purchased an Underwater Inspection System (UIS) from Cod Octopus

     

  • New device dismantles pipe bombs safely, preserving forensic evidence

    Thousands of pipe bombs are made each year, and thousands of pipe bomb threats are called into local police and FBI authorities across the country; many are false alarms, but those that are not can be deadly; dismantling a pipe bomb is tricky and serious business, and missteps during the dismantling process can produce catastrophic results

  • New technology combats global pandemic of drug counterfeiting

    Drug counterfeiting is so common in some developing countries – in some studies, 50 percent of the drug samples from Southeast Asia have been counterfeit — that patients with serious diseases are at risk of getting a poor-quality drug instead of one with ingredients that really treat their illness

  • Remote monitoring market exceeds $29 billion in 2011

    A new reports says that the world market for remote monitoring services was worth more than $29 billion in 2011, equivalent to $2.4 billion in recurring monthly revenues (RMR) across the year; the report also estimated that, in the same year, 54 million accounts, or customer locations, were provided with services

  • DHS seeks better ways to detect ultra light aircrafts used by smugglers

    As the war on drugs continues with every sunrise and sunset, DHS has awarded a contract just short of $100 million for a specialized system which will be able to detect ultralight aircrafts which are used to smuggle drugs across the border

  • Lifelike, cost-effective robotic hand disables IEDs

    Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a cost-effective robotic hand that can be used in disarming improvised explosive devices, or IEDs; the Sandia Hand addresses challenges which have prevented widespread adoption of other robotic hands, such as cost, durability, dexterity, and modularity

  • U.S. Army trains rats in explosives detection

    Landmines kill between 15,000 and 20,000 people a year, and continue to kill adults and children decades after a conflict ends; the U.S. Department of Defense currently relies on dogs as the animal of choice for explosives detection, but Pentagon researchers want to see whether rats can be trained to do the job; rats are smaller so they can search smaller spaces than a dog can, and are easier to transport

  • Health consequences of the Fukushima disaster

    The results of two studies in the 15 August issue of JAMA report on the psychological status of workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan several months after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and the amount of internal radiation exposure among residents of a city north of the power plant that experienced a meltdown

  • Smiths Detection Expands Radiation Offering

    Partnership with Mirion enables Smiths Detection to offer customers a fuller range of radiation detection technologies

  • World’s largest blimp passes flight test

    The world’s largest, lighter-than-air, optionally piloted aircraft — the U.S. Army’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) – completed its first test flight in Lakehurst, New Jersey, the birthplace of the U.S. storied military airship past; the LEMV will provide improved ISR capabilities to the U.S. Army in the form of an “unblinking stare” over ground troops, ranging anywhere from one day to multiple weeks

  • First class of U.S. Army soldiers completed training with Raytheon's JLENS

    JLENS uses a powerful integrated radar system to detect, track, and target a variety of threats, allowing military units to defend against threats, including hostile cruise missiles, low-flying manned and unmanned aircraft, large caliber rockets, and moving surface vehicles such as boats, SCUD-launchers, automobiles, and tanks

  • NYPD, Microsoft develop and deploy new surveillance system

    The New York Police Department (NYPD) and Microsoft have teamed up to create the Domain Awareness System, which will analyze real-time safety data for use by NYPD investigators; the system will act as a communications hub which will allow a number of advanced counterterrorism systems to relay information to more than 1,000 people in the field

  • Advanced explosives detector sniffs out previously undetectable amounts of TNT

    TNT and other conventional explosives are the mainstays of terrorist bombs and the anti-personnel mines that kill or injure more than 15,000 people annually in war-torn countries; in large, open-air environments, such as airports, train stations, and minefields, concentrations of these explosives can be as small as a few parts of TNT per trillion parts of air, making it impossible for conventional bomb and mine detectors to detect the explosives and save lives