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Army chief General Anupong Paochinda yesterday said he would not allow any Army agencies to make additional purchases of GT200 bomb detectors now that the United Kingdom has issued a warning saying the devices are useless.

"Since there are some doubts, we have to delay the procurement decisions until things become clearer," Anupong told reporters, adding that his orders would not affect any ongoing purchases of the equipment.

"Let look into the details and see if there are any legal consequences of the decision to delay the purchases," he said.

According to a BBC report, Britain's Foreign Office has warned all governments that bomb detectors such as the ADE 651 and GT200 are wholly ineffective.



Anupong, backing down after experts criticised the Army for purchasing useless equipment at relatively high prices, said the Army would conduct scientific tests to prove the equipment's ability.

"I personally want to know if it really works, because my men on the ground insist it does while experts say it theoretically doesn't," he said.

An investigative report broadcast by the BBC in its "Newsnight" programme found that the GT200 is similar to the ADE 651 brand, which was banned by the UK because it was ineffective in detecting explosives. The manufacturer of the equipment, Jim McCormick, was arrested early this month for fraud.

The GT200 consists of an aerial that |is connected to a black box into which operators can insert substance-detection software cards. Gary Bolton, who runs Global Technical, manufacturers of the GT200, said: "There are no electronic parts required in the handle."

However, when explosives expert Sidney Alford took apart the "black box", which is supposed to receive signals from the detection cards, he was surprised with what he found.

"Speaking as a professional, I would say that is an empty plastic case," he told the BBC. Alford, who also took apart a "detection card", found that it was nothing more than a simple card and a piece of paper.

The Nation has also discovered that the GT200 is just a new name for MOLE, a product that was earlier made by Global Technical but did not pass the scientific test conducted in 2002 by the US Department of Justice's Sandia National Laboratories.

It was proven that the MOLE |bomb detector only had a 33.3-per-cent chance of finding explosives - in absolute contrast to the 95-per-cent accuracy claimed by the manufacturers.

"The product performed no better than random chance," the Sandia report concluded.

Meanwhile, a molecular scientist from the Chulalongkorn University, Jetsada Denduangboripan, told the lower house's Security Affairs Committee yesterday that the GT200 was nothing more than a dowsing rod that helped build the confidence of people looking for bombs.