Rapiscan gets FAA order for body-scanning systems
OCTOBER 30--Rapiscan Security Products Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of OSI Systems Inc. (Hawthorne, CA; www.rapiscan.com) that provides security solutions to airports, customs facilities, correctional facilities, and governments, has been awarded by the FAA an order for five Secure 1000 body-scanning systems. The company currently has several Secure 1000 units placed with United States Customs at various US airport locations. The FAA is purchasing these five systems to study their potential for enhancing security at the nation's airports. The study will be conducted at the FAA's William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ. Product delivery has commenced and is expected to be completed by the end of this calendar year.
In recent testimony before the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Aviation Security, Andreas Kotowski, Rapiscan's CTO, recommended that the Secure 1000 be implemented as a key security measure because its technology can disclose all types of contraband concealed on the body, even under clothing and hair, including plastic weapons, ceramic weapons, and explosives; not only metallic items. "The Secure 1000 is a solution for the detection of potential threats that are carried on a person's body," said Deepak Chopra, Chairman and CEO of OSI Systems. "It has the ability to detect nonmetallic objects such as ceramic or graphite weapons, plastic explosives, or threats stored in glass containers. Its small footprint and rapid throughput would allow the system to be rapidly deployed at secure installations as a solid complement to x-ray baggage scanners and walk-through metal detectors."
The Secure 1000's proprietary computer processing creates a computer image of the scanned individual to show the shape, size, and location of objects concealed under the person's clothing. In addition to metallic items, the system can detect such items as dynamite, C-4, ceramics, graphite fibers, plastic, packaged narcotics, bundled currency, and even wooden objects. One complete body scan by the Secure 1000 is equal to approximately 6 microREMs of radiation, equivalent to what a person would receive from watching television for a few minutes, and is less than 1% of the minimum natural level of background radiation that all people are exposed to every day.