The recent outbreaks of swine flu arrived on American shores without warning. Fortunately, this biohazard proved less threatening than first thought. But what would have happened if this had been an extremely virulent form of influenza as happened in 1918? Or if the catastrophe was a biological weapon deployed by a terrorist? Without accurate and timely warning, an effective response is virtually impossible.

The US Department of Homeland Security has been inexplicably slow in deploying new sensor systems to provide improved warning of attack, whether by biological threats or nuclear materials being smuggled through US ports of entry. In the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, special anthrax sensors were deployed in US Postal Service mail handling centers.

A limited number of other biosensors -- the exact number and their location is classified -- were deployed at selected high-traffic locations in major metropolitan areas. Yet, more than eight years later, no more biosensors have been deployed.

As the US Postal Service learned how to employ their anthrax sensors, it discovered it could make do with fewer than the Department of Homeland Security had initially deployed. The excess inventory, several hundred units, was returned to the Department of Homeland Security. Rather than deploying these effective systems to provide some level of coverage for critical targets such as federal buildings in Washington, the Department of Homeland Security has allowed them to sit in a warehouse.

A new generation of sensors has been developed under contract to the Department of Homeland Security that could provide reliable warning of a biological threat in a matter of hours. The Autonomous Pathogen Detection System is essentially an automated laboratory in a box, able to detect multiple threats, and report every four hours. This system has already undergone two years of field testing. ....