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The IED Manhattan Project is a joke, ripe with corruption.

Your example doesn't prove your point. I first met Ionatron about 30 minutes after they walked out of the DEP SEC DEF's office and 35 minutes after we got a call from same telling us we needed to look at their wonderful technology. We did. It sucked. We said so. So Ionatron turned to the press and to politicians who are more than happy to give them money for their bug zapper.

Corruption, yes. But its not the IED folks who are supporting it - As you point out, credit our wonderful elected officials and political appointees

sorry if you mistook my comments for criticism of the entire project. I should have been more clear, just like Katrina, politicians use real world problems to line the pockets of political allies. Finding ways to counter IED's is an essential task, but leaving politicians in charge of funding that research is a recipe for diasaster.

The IED Manhattan Project is a joke, ripe with corruption.

Your example doesn't prove your point. I first met Ionatron about 30 minutes after they walked out of the DEP SEC DEF's office and 35 minutes after we got a call from same telling us we needed to look at their wonderful technology. We did. It sucked. We said so. So Ionatron turned to the press and to politicians who are more than happy to give them money for their bug zapper.

Any thoughts about the forthcoming *Joint services EOD vehicle*? Presumably they're going with a variant of the Force Protection Inc. 6x6 *Buffalo* MPCV

Oh yeah, EOD *redfenders* ping: Fireinthehole!

Army 2nd Lt. David Swisher, a platoon leader with the 612th Engineer Battalion, points out damage from an improvised-explosive-device detonation on the side of a “mine protective clearance vehicle,” or MPCV, which the soldiers call a Buffalo. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, center, and Army Col. Jim Brooks, commander of 3rd Infantry Division’s Maneuver-Enhancement Brigade, look on durng the secretary's April 12 visit to Iraq.
Photo by Kathleen T. Rhem