Posted on 06/20/2009 7:17:22 PM PDT by neverdem
WHILE President Obama’s future vision of “a world with no nuclear weapons” is certainly laudable, for the present America still needs to do everything it can to prevent a terrorist from detonating such a bomb on our soil.
The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is in charge of developing a worldwide nuclear-detection system that, primarily, would use technology to monitor vehicles and shipping containers along the various transportation networks by which nuclear weapons could be smuggled into America. Yet the Government Accountability Office found last year that the detection office “lacks an overarching strategic plan,” despite the $2.8 billion a year spent on the initiative.
How should the detection office proceed? The best way to view the problem strategically is through game theory. In this case, the government plays first and uses its budget to place detection resources — technology, security experts and the like — at the various “nodes” along the transportation network, like seaports, airports and border stations. The terrorists, in turn, can be expected to choose the path that gives them the best chance to carry out an attack.
As the accompanying chart illustrates, there are a dizzying number of paths that terrorists could use to transport a foreign-built weapon to an American target city — 132 variations, in fact, taking into consideration all four likely modes of transport: commercial airplane, cargo airplane, container ship and cruise ship.
So, how do we decide which route the terrorists are most likely to choose and which path we the are most vulnerable to? Game theory implies that we should maintain an equal chance of detecting fissile material along each of the 132 paths because if we harden one path too much, the terrorists will simply choose an easier one. On top of it...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What is sad is that we’ll have to be right 100% of the time...
The bad guys will only have to be right once...
what do they do if they find one?
I know Bush was supposed to recognize the threat, but nothing came of any efforts. Surely, this wuss will do nothing more than give speeches.
““a world with no nuclear weapons””
Intellectual bastard son of “a world without guns”.
That, for the Liberals, retards, and the decerebrate, means a world where the strongest rule by force of crude weapons like swords.
For all females who support a disarmed world, consider that only Sam Colt made you equal to a man in terms of defense.
Call Jack Bower
The same reasoning they have for everything (except gun control): If it isn’t 100% effective, why bother?
“I know Bush was supposed to recognize the threat, but nothing came of any efforts.”
DNDO, DHS, TSA, and a host of commercial outfits actually did quite a lot in the area of detecting nuke threats. That’s where the ASP program came from, among several other systems.
Lots of basic research and engineering efforts were completed (I did some work looking at advanced scintillators like CeYAG and TlBr).
The fact that the results don’t get reported like NASCAR results is regrettable, but perhaps it’s better if the bad guys don’t know which highways have gamma scanners buried in the offramps.
Obama’s future vision of “a world with no nuclear weapons” is certainly...dangerous.
Obama’s future vision of “a world with no nuclear weapons” is certainly...suspicious.
I heard that even today the detector must be within about **200 meters** for it to register the radioactive material...?!??!
There, I think that elucidates the Left's appeal for rationality and pacifism.
I was involved in research to develop a low cost radiation detection system. What we ended up with was a detector (for under 2000 dollars) that could distinguish individual isotopes at 1/4 to 1/2 a mile. We had also developed a capability where these sensors would be networked (this is the portion of the project I was involved in) to do triangular location detection. The results were that we were actually able to locate a smoke detector at about 1/2 a mile. Obviously way too sensitive, but you could selectively “squelch” certain isotopes. Unfortunately, our funding was cut, as DHS decided to fund the big engineering companies for this project, to date, as I understand they are still light years behind where our research left off. It is a national tradgedy we were not able to continue our research efforts as we had truly gifted minds working on the problem. Along the way, we had also developed a “smart” shipping container (for less than 1000 dollars/per container) which would monitor a container (and nearby containers) to determine if there were any nasty cargo aboard the container, and to continuously update a centralized monitoring system.
The author seems to think all general aviation flights originate at airports. I guess it would be a true revelation were he to discover that private citizens have grass landing strips in places like northern Maine, Nebraska and by golly, lakes in Minnesota and Alaska.
These eggheads think they know it all.
Make sure you always cut the “blue” wire...Not the “red” one...
Well it is sad, no, check that...
It is apparent that it does not take much to get one up on anyone at the NYT...
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