GE’s portable technology that detects trace amounts of explosives is now hitching up for a tour of duty with the U.S. Army. MobileTrace — which is made by GE Security’s Homeland Protection business — is a handheld device that can identify both explosives and narcotics by using the GE-patented technology already deployed at military bases, border crossings and security checkpoints. Initial delivery of the MobileTrace units ordered by the Army just began.
Guard duty: MobileTrace, which can spot substances that are just billionths of a gram, expands the range of explosives and narcotics that can be identified in a single sample — thereby allowing a faster, more comprehensive screening.
GE Security originally developed MobileTrace, which was launched in 2007, under a contract with the United States’ Technical Support Working Group (TSWG) with funding support from the U.S. Department of Defense. TSWG is a national forum that identifies, prioritizes, and coordinates research and development requirements for combating terrorism.
Last year, GE’s technology was used at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Denver, Colorado — during the Democratic Party’s national convention — to search for traces of explosives on luggage and on the steering wheels, door handles and trunks of cars parked in the hotel’s underground garage.
Because the technology can also be used to detect narcotics, police have successfully used it in places such as Tennessee, where it was recently deployed to collect samples from suspected meth cookhouses. In North Carolina, MobileTrace was used by Sheriff’s deputies to identify narcotics-tainted cash as part of a drug bust.
In recent years, the arsenal of explosive substances used by terrorist and other groups has expanded beyond the range of detection that instruments utilizing traditional “ion mobilization spectrometry” (IMS) technology employ. These conventional detectors operate in either positive or negative mode, but not both modes simultaneously. This has led to limitations during searches — since the most effective way to detect a broad range of explosives is to use simultaneous, or “dual-mode” detection.
The innovation that allowed instruments to simultaneously detect in both positive and negative modes was patented by GE under the name Ion Trap Mobility Spectrometry (ITMS®). For example, take an analysis of smokeless powder — which is one of the more easily improvised and commercially available explosives and is used to make pipe bombs. During the screen, the dual-mode technology produces a reading in the negative mode, which identifies the substance only as “nitro.” But since many other explosive compounds also register as “nitro” in that mode, these substances cannot be differentiated with a single mode detector. By contrast, GE’s ITMS technology can simultaneously observe a secondary reading in the positive ion mode — revealing the signature response of smokeless powder, thereby distinguishing it from other explosives.
* Read today’s announcement
* Read GE’s white paper on trace technologies
* Learn about GE’s work with Homeland Security on a mobile nuclear detection system
* Read “Hoo-rah! Marines fire-up GE’s smart grid technology”
* Learn about GE’s work on the Joint Strike Fighter engine
* Learn more about the more than 11,000 military veterans currently working at GE
* Read “GE sensors help “Hotheads” stay cool”
* Read “GE Healthcare technology leaps to airport security”
