US awards $1.16 bln for border scanning gear (Reuters)

[Up2Late]

(Let the Friday News dump begin!)

US awards $1.16 bln for border scanning gear

Fri Jul 14, 2006 05:40 PM ET

By Deborah Charles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Friday it awarded $1.16 billion in contracts to three companies to develop equipment to scan cargo at border cities for nuclear weapons material.

Raytheon Co., Thermo Electron Corp. and Canberra Industries were awarded the contracts for a program known as the advanced spectroscopic portal.

Officials did not give the specific breakdown of the contract award but said it was divided roughly equally among the three companies.

Raytheon said its initial contract was for $18.2 million, but the domestic market for the equipment could be worth more than $1 billion. The United States has more than 600 ports of entry.

(more at link) <http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=12850195&src=rss/domesticNews>

[ixion]

1. more money for the MIC trough

seems repukes are always ready to write a check for one bogus project or another, but when it comes to reasonable things, like infrastructure and education, well, there's just no money for that. :grr:

[Up2Late]

2. Sorry, what is "MIC"? I don't know that one.

:shrug:

[Dover]

3. Military Industrial Complex. I think they hyped the border issue in order

to justify more contracts. They create the need and then fill it with their own people.

[Up2Late]

4. Oh, O.K., yeah, that's exactly what they do...

...no doubt about it.

[Up2Late]

5. kick n/t

:kick:

[The Wielding Truth]

6. Wouldn't a lead box stop a scanner? Couldn't just an unusually dense

package be detected at customs and wouldn't $1.6 bln buy a lot of geiger counters,extra inspection personnel, extra funneling research and lots of insider intelligence?
Oh well. I guess Republicans have shown how well they can run things.Why worry.