There is a growing interest in trace analysis of explosives due to illegal use of these compounds. High security areas, such as airports and national buildings, have invested extensive research into the development of trace-level explosives detectors. Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), an analytical technique, has been found to be a promising solution due to its portability, sensitivity, and fast response times. In this talk, the standard approaches to detecting explosives will be discussed. I restrict myself to two processes, desorption and ionization in IMS, pointing out disadvantages of conventional approaches. Pulsed laser-induced desorption and photoemission ionization, which we plan to use to improve the performance of IMS, will be demonstrated.