Military security explosives

Criminals and mentally disturbed or immature persons are both likely to be limited by the availability of materials and knowledge. In addition, criminals are quite likely to be more susceptible than the other groups to deterrence by visible and effective security measures. Thus, the first two groups — state-sponsored actors and non-state-sponsored terrorists — are the main threats on which explosives detection needs to focus. Unfortunately, this conclusion implies the need for detection of military, commercial, and improvised explosives and does not greatly help in narrowing down the issues. 

In order to make the Encyclopedia ascompactas possible we used abbreviations, many of which are the same as used in Chemical Abstracts except that periods after abbreviations are omitted. A list of abbreviations symbols, code letters and special designations of items connected with explosives, propellants, pyrotechnics, ammunition and weapons is included in this work. This list is placed immediately before the Encyclopedia proper (see Abbreviations, pp Abbr 1-59) and also includes abbreviations and code letters for various Ordnance establishments, industrial installations and scientific institutions, both US and foreign. Some additional abbreviations are given in a supplementary list (see Abbreviations, pp Abbr 59-65). Wherever we have been able to do so and are permitted by security regulations, the meaning of code letters on ammunition, weapons and other military items is briefly explained... 

More than 104 ion mobility spectrometers are deployed at airport security checkpoints to detect explosives, and perhaps 105 hand-portable devices are used by military and civil defense personnel. Although functionally similar to mass spectrometers, mobility spectrometers are operated in air at ambient pressure and ion mobility spectrometry is not a form of mass spectrometry. Ion mobility spectrometry does not measure molecular mass and provides no structural information. However, it is so widely used that we introduce it here. 

The routine tests which are carried out on military explosives art described in U. S. War Department Technical Manual TM9-2900, Military Explosives. The testing of explosives for sensitivity, explosive power, etc., is described in the Bulletins and Technical Papers of the U. S. Bureau of Mines. The student of explosives is advised to secure from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C., a list of the publications of the Bureau of Mines, and then to supply himself with as many as may be of interest, for they are sold at very moderate prices. The following are especially recommended. Several of these are now no longer procurable from the Superintendent of Documents, but they may be found in many libraries. 

The terrorist CW threat differs fundamentally from the military CW threats of the past. Essentially, it is driven by accessibility of the material. On the one hand, there has to be concern about the security of existing CW stockpiles. But it is equally important to ensure that terrorist organizations cannot get access to relevant precursor materials or toxic industrial chemicals to produce their own make-shift chemical weapons. A related concern is the presence of toxic industrial chemicals in manufacturing, storage and transport, and the danger of deliberate releases of these chemicals by attacks with conventional explosives. 

The military realized the great implications of this discovery. Nitromethane is very easily and cheaply made in potentially massive quantities by the vapor phase reaction of nitric acid and methane. This is a process which is far simpler and quicker than the production of any other of the high explosives. In the interests of national security, we had to keep this discovery for ourselves, and out of enemy hands. Then, beginning in about 1960, a series of patents were issued detailing basically the same invention. The cat was now out of the bag, so in 1966 he finally had US Patent 3,239,395 issued to him. By then it was too late for him to enjoy all the millions of dollars to-be made from this invention. That, however, doesn t mean that we can t enjoy the fruits of his labors. 

During this past decade, knowledge of IMS emerged from the spheres of military and security use, for which efforts had been under way for 30 years, into a national and international awareness that IMS analyzers are the core technology to counter increased civilian vulnerability to unconventional warfare through their use in military preparedness, aviation security, and explosive detection. This, when supplemented with successful commercialization of ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS) and development of pharmaceutical and clinical applications have altered the presence of IMS in the scientific enterprise. 

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