CHEM-​​SNIFFING PLANE OVER RNC

I think it’s uber-​​unlikely that ter­ror­ists are going to blast New York with chem­i­cal weapons dur­ing the RNC. But, just in case they do, the Environmental Protection Agency is ready.
The EPA has a twin-​​propeller Aero Commander 680 plane, refit­ted with sen­sors and soft­ware to become a fly­ing chem­i­cal detec­tor. And since it became oper­a­tional in 2001, this ASPECT (short for Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology) plane has been deployed 36 times through­out the coun­try, to track indus­trial acci­dents and poten­tial ter­ror­ist tar­gets.
“The mis­sions [have] rang[ed] from a chlorine-​​spilling train derail­ment near San Antonio, to the 2002 Olympic Games, to the crash of the space shut­tle Columbia (with its release of toxic fuel). Normally based out­side of Dallas, the air­craft has been sent to both of this year’s polit­i­cal con­ven­tions,” GovExec​.com says. “It is cur­rently stand­ing by at an area air­field near New York City.”

September 1st, 2004 | Chem-Bio | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.