Dr. Kirk Vanden, technical advisor for the computational mechanics branch, Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate, is the lead principal investigator on the project.

One of the goals of the research is to advance warhead technology and the team is getting closer to this goal.

Recently, the team determined the level of chemistry modeling needed to model hypersonic flows at sea level conditions.

Because hypersonic vehicles normally fly at very high altitudes the research team had to answer some fundamentally new questions about hypersonic flight at sea-level conditions before proceeding with their broader research goals.

Vanden's team was awarded the grant to study hypersonic and unsteady flow science issues for explosively-formed penetrator warheads. Hypersonic speed is equal to or greater than five times the speed of sound.

Vanden's work mostly concentrates on studying flows at speeds of around Mach 6, using highly advanced computational fluid dynamics codes.

Dr. John D. Schmisseur, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research program manager, oversees office's boundary layers and hypersonics grant portfolio, which includes this research grant to Vanden. Schmisseur believes Vanden's work is truly cutting-edge.

"This is an exciting new application of nontraditional hypersonic computational analysis," Schmisseur said."We are really excited about Kirk applying these new tools to his problem."

"If we do that, we'll be able to hopefully revolutionize some of the analysis tools to help develop new warhead technologies for the warfighter," he noted.

Although Vanden's work in this arena is not ready for the application stage yet, Schmisseur said Vanden has a solid reputation for taking basic research to the next level.

"The key part about Kirk's research is that he's really building the bridge between our basic research programs and actual tools for application that will benefit the warfighter," Schmisseur explained. "He's a great transitioner of our technology and science."

Vanden's research could lead to increasing the capability of existing warheads.

"Without going into specifics, this research already has a use in mind," Vanden said. "We already have things in place with people who are doing the warhead work, so it is not something that we 'hope' to use someday, it is something that the warhead designers in my directorate have already given me problems to work on."

"We are now trying to develop the capability to go look at those problems," he concluded.

Busby's report concluded that such results could be caused either by bunker-busting conventional bombs using uranium or a new kind of weapon bearing a "novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash."

An Italian television report aired last week made a similar claim, raising the possibility that Israel had used a weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.

The report claimed the weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.

The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.

Israel Air Force Maj.-Gen (res.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, formerly head of the IDF's weapons-development program, told the Italian reporters that "one of the ideas [behind the weapon] is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons."

The investigation, by Rai24news, follows reports by Gaza-based doctors of inexplicably serious injuries. The doctors reported an exceptionally large number of wounded who lost legs, of completely burned bodies and injuries unaccompanied by metal shrapnel. Some of the doctors also claimed that they removed particles from wounds that could not be seen in an x-ray machine.

According to those who testified, the wounded were hit by munitions launched from drones, most of them in July.

Dr. Habas al-Wahid, head of the emergency room at the Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital, in Deir el-Balah, told the reporters that the legs of the injured were sliced from their bodies "as if a saw was used to cut through the bone." There were signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation, but no signs that the dismemberment was caused by metal fragments.

Dr. Juma Saka, of Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, said the doctors found small entry wounds on the bodies of the wounded and the dead. According to Saka, a powder was found on the victims' bodies and in their internal organs.

"The powder was like microscopic shrapnel, and these are what likely caused the injuries," Saka said.

The Italian investigative team raised the possibility that the IDF is making use of a weapon similar in character to DIME - Dense Inert Metal Explosive - developed for the U.S. military. According to the official website of a U.S. air force laboratory, it is a "focused lethality" weapon, which aims to accurately destroy the target while causing minimum damage to the surrounding.

According to the site, the projectile comprises a carbon-fiber casing filled with tungsten powder and explosives. In the explosion, tungsten particles - a metal capable of conducting very high temperatures - spread over a radius of four meters and cause death.

According to the U.S.-based website Defense-Tech, "the result is an incredibly destructive blast in a small area" and "the destructive power of the mixture causes far more damage than pure explosive." It adds that "the impact of the micro-shrapnel seems to cause a similar but more powerful effect than a shockwave."

The weapon is supposed to still be in the testing phase and has not been used on the battlefield.

The Italian reporters sent samples of the particles found in wounds of injured in the Gaza Strip to a laboratory at the University of Parma. Dr. Carmela Vaccaio said that in analyzing the samples, she found "a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials," such as copper, aluminum and tungsten. Dr. Vaccaio says these findings "could be in line with the hypothesis" that the weapon in question is DIME.

On the matter of DIME, Ben-Israel told the Italian reporters that "this is a technology that allows the striking of very small targets."

The report says that the weapon is not banned by international law, especially since it has not been officially tested.

It is believed that the weapon is highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment.

The non-governmental organization Physicians for Human Rights has written to Defense Minister Amir Peretz requesting explanations for the aforementioned injuries to Palestinians. Amos Gilad, a senior adviser to the minister, is supposed to meet with the group on the matter in the near future.

But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.

Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.

Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste productof the enrichment process is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium.

Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas - until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.

I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary drawer in West Beirut during the Israeli siege of the city, suddenly burst back into flames. Israel officially denied using phosphorous again in Lebanon during the summer - except for "marking" targets - even after civilians were photographed in Lebanese hospitals with burn wounds consistent with phosphorous munitions.

Then on Sunday, Israel suddenly admitted that it had not been telling the truth. Jacob Edery, the Israeli minister in charge of government-parliament relations, confirmed that phosphorous shells were used in direct attacks against Hizbollah, adding that "according to international law, the use of phosphorous munitions is authorised and the (Israeli) army keeps to the rules of international norms".

Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been using uranium-based munitions in Lebanon this summer, Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not authorised by international law or international conventions." This, however, begs more questions than it answers. Much international law does not cover modern uranium weapons because they were not invented when humanitarian rules such as the Geneva Conventions were drawn up and because Western governments still refuse to believe that their use can cause long-term damage to the health of thousands of civilians living in the area of the explosions.

American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry - and five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq.

Initial US military assessments warned of grave consequences for public health if such weapons were used against armoured vehicles. But the US administration and the British government later went out of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the cancers continued to spread amid reports that civilians in Bosnia - where DU was also used by Nato aircraft - were suffering new forms of cancer. DU shells were again used in the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq but it is too early to register any health effects.

"When a uranium penetrator hits a hard target, the particles of the explosion are very long-lived in the environment," Dr Busby said yesterday. "They spread over long distances. They can be inhaled into the lungs. The military really seem to believe that this stuff is not as dangerous as it is." Yet why would Israel use such a weapon when its targets - in the case of Khiam, for example - were only two miles from the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions can be blown across international borders, just as the chlorine gas used in attacks by both sides in the First World War often blew back on its perpetrators.

Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University, who has reviewed the Busby report, said: "At worst it's some sort of experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component the purpose of which we don't yet know. At best - if you can say that - it shows a remarkably cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products."

The soil sample from Khiam - site of a notorious torture prison when Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, and a frontline Hizbollah stronghold in the summer war - was a piece of impacted red earth from an explosion; the isotope ratio was 108, indicative of the presence of enriched uranium. "The health effects on local civilian populations following the use of large uranium penetrators and the large amounts of respirable uranium oxide particles in the atmosphere," the Busby report says, "are likely to be significant ... we recommend that the area is examined for further traces of these weapons with a view to clean up."

This summer's Lebanon war began after Hizbollah guerrillas crossed the Lebanese frontier into Israel, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others, prompting Israel to unleash a massive bombardment of Lebanon's villages, cities, bridges and civilian infrastructure. Human rights groups have said that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked civilians, but that Hizbollah was also guilty of such crimes because it fired missiles into Israel which were also filled with ball-bearings, turning their rockets into primitive one-time-only cluster bombs.

Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the latest Lebanon war was a weapons testing ground for the Americans and Iranians, who respectively supply Israel and Hizbollah with munitions. Just as Israel used hitherto-unproven US missiles in its attacks, so the Iranians were able to test-fire a rocket which hit an Israeli corvette off the Lebanese coast, killing four Israeli sailors and almost sinking the vessel after it suffered a 15-hour on-board fire.

What the weapons manufacturers make of the latest scientific findings of potential uranium weapons use in southern Lebanon is not yet known. Nor is their effect on civilians.

Zaki Rakib, a wealthy businessman, built a shelter for himself and his family under his large villa overlooking the Mediterranean in Herzliya, an exclusive garden suburb north of Tel Aviv.

"The shelter looks like a regular flat," he said. "It is 2,000 square feet, with a living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, self-powered electricity."

Rakib's post-nuclear pad, which can accommodate more than 25 people for two weeks, cost about £250,000. "The difference between an atomic shelter and a regular one is in the technical components: the thickness of the walls and a special system to block radioactive fallout," he said.

Leading the stampede to the nuclear bunker is Shari Arison, the country's wealthiest woman, estimated to be worth about £2.7 billion. The Israeli media have reported that she has already made preparations for Armageddon by building two sophisticated underground structures. One is at her home in Tel Aviv, the other in the garden of her holiday villa in Bnei Zion village.

Firms specialising in the manufacture of such shelters are booming. Ahim Torati is a company producing parts for atomic shelters. "We supply components for decontaminated air, fortified doors and walls," said Menahem Torati, its owner.

"If in a regular shelter the door should withstand a five-ton blast, the door of an atomic shelter should absorb 250-270 tons."

Seeking to allay public fears, the government insists that the population has little to fear. "We are aware of all these panicky people building atomic shelters. They're wasting their money," said a security source.

"Israel will not allow Iran to build an atomic bomb, and even if it did, the Iranians know very well that we'll bomb them back to the Stone Age before they've launched a single missile."

However, the government is quietly updating its preparations for a possible nuclear strike. Ephraim Sneh, the deputy defence minister, confirmed that a £300m nuclear shelter is being constructed in the Jerusalem hills for the Israeli war cabinet. "This will be a command and control centre that will be able to run the state of Israel during a war, even after a nuclear strike," he said.

Israelis are used to coping with the threat of war, but until recently the civilian population has been largely unaffected by conflicts beyond the country's borders. The 34-day invasion of Lebanon last summer, however, brought war closer to home. Up to 250 Hezbollah missiles rained down on Israel every day. Millions of terrified Israelis spent the hottest weeks of the summer in shelters.

Iran's increasingly bellicose rhetoric is fuelling fears that the next war could bring even more devastation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel should be "wiped off the map". As well as developing nuclear technology, Tehran boasts long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting any target in Israel.

Many Israelis no longer trust their government to protect them. One man building a £60,000 nuclear shelter in his Tel Aviv garden said: "After the Lebanon war, I concluded that I have to protect my family, as I'm not sure the state will be able to do it."

While the well-off are calling in the builders, nearly one third of the country's population have no protection even against conventional weapons. "If Tel Aviv were attacked today, you can expect thousands of casualties," predicted one security expert. AMID mounting fears that Iran is planning to obliterate their country, wealthy Israelis are shelling out on underground nuclear shelters in the gardens of their luxury homes.

Missing from the Defense Department's inventory books were 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns.

The audit on logistics capabilities said there is a "significant risk'' that the Iraqi interior ministry "will not be capable of assuming and sustaining logistics support for the Iraqi local and national police forces in the near term.'' That support includes equipment maintenance, transportation of people and gear and health resources for soldiers and police.

The audit on Provincial Reconstruction Teams said that, because of security issues, they "have varying degrees of ability to carry out their missions.'' Auditors reviewed nine teams and four satellite offices and found "4 were generally able, 4 were somewhat able, 3 were less able and 2 were generally unable'' to accomplish their goals.