Detecting Suicide Bombers at a Distance

It is difficult to identify a suicide bomber before he strikes. Because of this, the tactic has been adopted by many islamist terror organisations. Child suicide bombers, as pictured, are celebrated in the islamist world as a sign of moral strength. Many muslim imams and mullahs specialise in the recruiting of youthful suicide bombers in mosques.

Using new technology, it may be possible to identify a suicide bomber far enough from a target to neutralise the threat without the loss of innocent lives.

One com­pa­ny claims to have de­vel­oped a way around this: the first tech­nol­o­gy that au­to­mat­i­cally disco­vers the bombs from a safe dis­tance. The sys­tem in­volves aim­ing a low-power ra­dar beam at peo­ple from as far as 100 me­ters (109 yards) away.

Soft­ware with­in the sys­tem re­veals con­cealed ob­jects with­out show­ing the body un­der­neath, which could vi­o­late sub­jects’ pri­va­cy, ac­cord­ing to the de­vel­op­ers. The tech­nol­o­gy was de­scribed last month in Tech­nol­o­gy Re­view, a mag­a­zine of the Mas­sa­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy.

The sys­tem is de­vel­oped by SET Corp. of Ar­ling­ton, Va. The small, pri­vate­ly owned busi­ness was founded in 2002 by sci­en­tists from the De­fense Ad­vanced Re­search Pro­jects Agen­cy, the U.S. De­fense De­part­ment’s re­search and de­vel­op­ment arm.

The sys­tem uti­lizes vi­deo-anal­y­sis soft­ware de­signed by Ra­ma Chel­lappa, an elec­tri­cal and com­put­er en­gi­neer at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mar­y­land, ac­cord­ing to Tech­nol­o­gy Re­view. The soft­ware is de­signed to track the sub­jec­t’s move­ments, so the ra­dar stays on tar­get.

Source


All branches of Islam have apparently adopted the suicide bomb tactic. Saudi Arabian Wahabist inspired Al Qaeda uses the tactic almost daily in Iraq and Southeast Asia. Iranian Shiite backed Hisbollah uses the tactic against enemies in Lebanon and in Israel. Palestinian muslims have adopted suicide bombing as their national sport.

If there ever is an all-Islam olympic games, no doubt the gold medal in suicide bombing will be the most sought after prize-posthumously.