DRDO launches explosive detection kit in US

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has launched its niche explosive detection kit in the US, in what looks like a reverse flow of technology.

Widely used in India by bomb detection squads and the armed forces since 2002, the handy kit can be used to instantly identify almost all explosive types that are used in bomb blasts.

The explosive detection kit is being manufactured and sold in the US and other parts of the world by Crowe and Company LLC, a Summerville, South Carolina-based company, under a technology transfer agreement.

Crowe and Company has entered into a licensing agreement with DRDO to manufacture and market the EDK, which was developed by High Energy Material Research Lab (HEMRL), Pune, one of the constituent laboratories of DRDO.

Crowe and Company then approached industry body FICCI for licensing agreement with DRDO for the technology under the DRDO-FICCI Accelerated Technology Assessment Commercialisation programme.

The technology used in the DRDO explosive detection kit is also simple. Samples from the crime scene are tested against chemicals in the kit, which then determines whether the explosive used is RDX, TNT, PETN or any other chemical.

DRDO has also made a pocket-sized, use-and-discard version of the kit, which can be used by local law-enforcement agencies to determine quick results in cases such as the Boston marathon bombing and New York City's Times Square episode.

DRDO's explosive detection kit has attracted attention from a range of international terrorism experts and law-enforcement agencies, for both its price and its features.

The DRDO kit has won several awards within the country and served as an import substitution for more expensive imported technologies.

The kit can detect and identify explosives based on any combination of nitroesters, nitramines, trinitrotoluene (TNT), dynamite or black powder.

The testing requires only 3 to 5 mg of suspected sample and only 3 or 4 drops of reagents.

The kit, which costs less than $100, comes packed in a box the size of a vanity case and in miniature vials that can be kept in shirt pockets, and contains reagents capable of detecting explosives, even in extremely small trace quantities.

The kit that has been developed out of terrorist-fleeced India's necessity to trace elusive terrorists is now increasingly finding use in the US and other western countries with the growing number of terrorist attacks in the West.