Sunday, May 8 2005 17:25 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Having spent over $ 4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the country's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the US Government is moving to replace or alter much of the anti-terrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate, a media report said today (May 8, 2005).

Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation's security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts conducted by 'The New York Times'.

The replacement or alteration will cost billions of dollars more, the report said. "Everyone was standing in line with their silver bullets to make us more secure after September 11," said Randall J Larsen, a retired Air Force colonel and former Government adviser on scientific issues.

"We bought a lot of stuff off the shelf that wasn't effective."

Among the problems described by the paper were radiation monitors at ports and borders that cannot differentiate between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile.

Air-monitoring equipment in major cities that is only marginally effective because not enough detectors were deployed and were sometimes not properly calibrated or installed.

"They also do not produce results for up to 36 hours - long after a biological attack would potentially infect thousands of people," the paper said.