Wacky weapons in London

[Bhelliom]

LONDON (AP) - Gooey toffee guns, high-powered water pistols and sniffer foxes? Not all of Britain's proposed weapons have made it past the drawing board.

Following the London terror bombings last month, Britain's government said Monday that its scientific development branch was designing a highly sensitive scanner to detect explosives, better body armour for police and more sophisticated surveillance equipment. But records show the Home Office's team of 200 scientists has looked at far more off-the-wall ideas to fight terror over the past 25 years.

The branch once worked on a special gun that blasted a toffee-like foam at a suspect. Although it was effective in immobilizing suspects, the project was abandoned when researchers found the sticky goo blocked people's airways.

A supercharged water gun, complete with a strap-on water tank, was also among the list of failed inventions. The portable water cannon did not make it past trial stage because the pressurized stream of water knocked users off their feet.

Another idea was a cannon that fired tennis balls at high speed - notably less lethal than a gun, but lacking in accuracy.

The development branch also tried to tap the talents of Britain's wildlife. After two foxes were seen digging up a corpse on a golf course in northern England, scientists tried to harness the creature's superb sense of smell by training foxes to become sniffer dogs.

The idea was shelved when the foxes kept biting their handlers and eventually chewed through their enclosures and escaped.

"New technologies are constantly assessed and this may include evaluation of innovations from scientists, inventors and commercial companies against clear policing operational requirements," the Home Office said in a statement.

Charles Shoebridge, a security analyst and former counterterrorism intelligence officer with London's Metropolitan Police, said research is also under way on closed-circuit camera systems that automatically recognize a suspect's face or trigger an alarm if a package was left unattended.



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