Cristanini announced it has started an “important co-operation” with the Danish procurement agency for a deployable decon field station. This military system will join the civilian variant already in service with the Danish Department of Homeland Security.

Legacy WW1 (and later) shells routinely wash up, or get caught in trawler nets, around the Welsh, Cornish and Irish coast, so it should have come as no surprise that when a shell, marked as mustard, is blown up on Whitesands Beach in the Gower, South Wales, that it contains mustard. Two members of the EOD team that did not take precautions were later treated at hospital for mustard burns. Presumably this has to happen every decade or so to remind people that mustard has an exceptionally long 'Use By’ date.

Recon Robotics has also introduced its throwable robot for the SWAT and military markets. Looking like a jogging dumbbell, weighing 1.3 lbs, the Recon Scout XT is able to go over most terrain at speed with the operator using only a single joystick, and can feed video back up to 100ft indoors and 300ft outdoors. The XT is simpler, more rugged and lightweight that their existing Scout robot. While the XT is black, their new Scout Rescue is bright yellow and is to be used in search and rescue in confined and dangerous environments.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have developed what they think it a high speed test to deal with biological contamination detection. Adrian Ponce within JPL has used a method using dipicolonic acid as a trigger for a luminescing effect on terbium - terbium is the chemical that generates the colour green on television screens. Once the dipicolnic acid and the terbium connect the colour change can be seen under a UV lamp – this colour change is symptomatic of live endospores. As with anything that does contamination detection (especially bio) if it works it will be truly revolutionary to the industry.

Avon announced the opening of a new service centre in Malaysia to repair and support the Malaysian product lines. Meanwhile, the FM12 was chosen to be part of the Quick Don ensemble – which means that they retain their hold on the UK civil market. In further Avon news their FM53 received NIOSH approval under title 42, Part 84 (42 CFR 84). This included the CTF12 riot agent canister, under approval number TC-14G-0304, the '53’ has been a good product for Avon, and they are clearly hoping that they will be able to transfer their success into the civil market.

The final US Defence Authorisation Bill is to have language very similar to the Nunn-Lugar treaty contained within it to be able to deal with the threat of bio terrorism. This would mean that the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Improvement Act would have more flexibility to meet unexpected threats and to be able to act in countries where certain laws would bar the use of such funds. There is also likely to be a $20 million increase in the $424 million requested for Nunn-Lugar to deal with the bio threat.