DHS Plans to Spend $300 Million on Radiation Detectors that May Not Work

The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend more than $300 million over the next four years on radiation-detection equipment that has not been fully tested and may not work, according to a budget request and an unreleased report by the Government Accountability Office, reports WaPo.

WaPO continues:

In January, the National Academy of Sciences released a report that found there was no way to know whether the machines, known as ASPs, worked as promised. An academy panel found that in promoting the machines to Congress, the department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office had presented its findings “in ways that are incorrect and potentially misleading.”

That report followed the department’s decision to abandon plans to use ASPs for primary screening at ports and borders because of such questions.

Now, the nuclear detection office said it intends to buy up to 400 ASPs by 2016, according the office’s budget request, even though the department has not fulfilled internal requirements to conduct an independent review of the results of ASP testing before buying the equipment, according to the new GAO report.

ASPs are made by war profiteer, Raytheon.

In November 2006, on the release of the first four engineering development models,  Mary Petryszyn, Raytheon vice president of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems' Joint Battlespace Integration business team said:

This is a tremendous effort by our Raytheon-led ASP team in a very rapid response to an urgent and critical homeland security need.

According to Raytheon:

Advanced spectroscopic portals are panel-like devices that contain detectors used to screen people, cars, trucks and containers for illicit radioactive materials at some of the more than 600 ports of entry into the United States.