You guys remember a few months ago when we were talking about the ADE 651, supposed to be the world’s greatest bomb detector because it could literally sniff out explosives from up to half a mile out?  And how we said that we were pretty sure it was a gigantic fake because its engineering was comprised of an assortment of science terms strung together semirandomly?

Well, as it turns out, there’s an update.  Seems that the heart of the device is a series of cards, that were supposed to detect various kinds of explosives.  You want to find, say, TNT, you insert one kind of card, and so on.

The problem is that the cards in question seem to be worthless.  They’re nothing more than RFID tags that haven’t been activated.

The device’s inventor, meanwhile, adamantly insists that his device isn’t worthless, saying this:

“We have been dealing with doubters for 10 years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.”

Over $85 million worth of these things had been sold over the course of the last ten years, so it’s not surprising that the inventor was recently arrested.  He’s currently out on bail and facing trial in as many as several different countries, and I have to admit, watching him defend the device against all these people calling it an utter fraud should be really interesting.

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The ADE 651 is a device with an impressive marketing angle.  Over in Iraq, it’s being used to sniff out everything from bombs to guns to drugs and beyond, and detect them all from a distance of up to half a mile.  It’s a handheld device, easy to carry, the Iraqi military swears by it…there’s just one problem.

It doesn’t actually work.

ATSC, the company that makes the ADE 651, claims that they work via “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction”, which if I remember my collegiate physics courses correctly means “a bunch of sciencey terms strung together almost at random”.  Independent testing of many similar devices by the Department of Defense shows none of them work much better than pure chance.  And here’s the part that’ll kill you–they sold the Iraqi military fifteen hundred of these things at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 dollars EACH.

And there you go.  The Iraqis bought at least $24 million worth of bomb detectors that don’t detect.

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