SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 27 -- A Defense Department report says the Air Force wasted $1 million on unreliable hand-held chemical agent detectors that could have put at risk any personnel who depended on the equipment, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Air Force officials may have violated federal laws and military rules when they bought 100 commercial versions of the detectors and supplied them to commanders in the Middle East while knowing that the manufacturer's tests showed the detectors did not work well in hot areas or under battle conditions, the Deseret Morning News reported.
 
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Moreover, officials did not wait for other necessary tests, including some at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground, according to a Defense Department inspector general's report the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Pentagon has ordered the Air Force to stop using the detectors and to send them to military testers who are working to improve them.
The documents say the military began developing a hand-held chemical weapons detector after the first Persian Gulf War, and BAE Systems was chosen as the contractor for a "joint chemical agent detector," or JCAD. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that company began marketing a commercial version called the JCAD ChemSentry.
The report says Air Force Central Command overseeing the Middle East erroneously believed the commercial unit had advantages over detectors it was using.
