RedXDefense of Rockville, Maryland has recently developed a portable kit that could provide a quick and simple visual diagnostic for detecting plastic explosives favored by terrorists. The device, which was designed to be used by in security checkpoints and under harsh conditions, is currently undergoing field tests in Iraq. While most explosives-detection methods look for vapors coming from the explosive metrical, the plastic explosives often used by terrorists such as like Richard Reid (the notorious “shoe bomber”) are not very volatile, and technologies for their detection usually require dislodging the explosive before running a chemical analysis. Unfortunately, these systems are...