Advancing optical spectroscopy was identified as a high priority by a National Science Foundation workshop in supporting counterterrorism and general intelligence community needs . These needs were seen as most critical in the WMD context . The highest priority was increasing the sensitivity of spectroscopic scanners , since , if an attack has not actually taken place , the threat needs to be analyzed remotely . In the real world of attempting early warning , expecting to get a signature of something , which is clearly a weapon , is unrealistic . Consider that the worst chemical poisoning in history was an industrial accident , the Bhopal disaster . The participants suggested that the " intelligence community must exploit signatures of feedstock materials , precursors , by-products of testing or production , and other inadvertent or unavoidable signatures . " False positives are inevitable , and other techniques need to screen them out
Bhopal disaster
Bhopal disaster
Electro-optical MASINT