IED Action
Written by Peter Buxbaum
TISR 2011 Volume: 1 Issue: 2 (June)
United States and coalition forces have faced improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan and Iraq for some years now. Published reports indicate that one-quarter of the two million Americans—500,000 warfighters—who have seen combat in Southwest Asia have been victims of multiple IED blasts. Some 40 percent of U.S. and coalition deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been associated with improvised explosive devices. So it comes as no surprise that counter-IED operations have emerged as a military priority.
The Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) is the focal point of the counter-IED effort. Its mandate has been to break down the stovepipes between different parts of the military in order to create a unified response to the threat. The organization has also been provided with flexibility in using funds to develop and field new capabilities.
JIEDDO’s response includes three aspects: detecting and defeating the devices through tactics and technology, attacking the network of bomb builders, and training the force to enable the first two lines of operations. And there are indications that JIEDDO’s efforts have met with success. Recent reports indicate that over the past six months the number of successful IED attacks in Afghanistan declined from 25 percent of all attempts to 16 percent.
“Warfighters employ a broad range of technologies to detect IEDs at all phases of their design, manufacture and employment,” said Irene Smith, a JIEDDO spokesperson. “Technologies range from simple observation and turn-ins by residents to more technical capabilities.”
New technologies are constantly applied to all aspects of the counter-IED effort, Smith noted. “Both the technologies and the associated concepts of operation are continually refined to adapt to lessons learned in Afghanistan and changing adversary tactics,” she said. “Specific technologies are protected to make it more difficult to counter them.”
JIEDDO’s science and technology program has the goal of bringing technology to maturity in order to accelerate the fielding of capabilities to theater. This is often done through a proof of concept test within two years of initial funding. “Three-year, uncolored funds allow the flexibility to fund solutions to meet the most critical needs,” said Smith. “JIEDDO programs are often worked in partnership and collaboration with experts from across the Department of Defense science and technology community.”
Uncolored funding means that it is not tied to a specific appropriation such as military personnel, operation and maintenance, procurement, or research, development, test and evaluation. “Our funding goes to a special fund that Congress created, the Joint IED Defeat Fund,” said Smith, “which authorizes us the flexibility to apply funds in areas where they will be best utilized to fight those that want to use IEDs against us.” JIEDDO’s rapid technology development program focuses activities in a number of areas, including detection and sensor exploitation, IED neutralization, information technology, and social and cultural studies.
Raytheon Company has followed JIEDDO’s lead in organizing a task force across its various lines of business, all contributing capabilities to the counter-IED effort. “We saw that IEDs became an evolving and enduring threat,” said Jim Madora, director of the Raytheon IED Defeat Task Force. “When the United States started fighting in Iraq, we saw that the threat was primarily IEDs triggered by radio-frequency devices such as cell phones. After the U.S. military deployed thousands of electronic jammers to the theater, the threat evolved to buried IEDs triggered by pressure plates or other devices.”
Raytheon comprises six different businesses, and when it first set out to develop counter-IED solutions, they were based on the stovepipe capabilities of the various internal businesses. “In late 2006, our CEO said we should be doing more to save the lives of warfighters,” said Madora, “so he directed that we form a Raytheon-wide IED task force that committed the intellect and talent of all the companies to the effort.”
Most of Raytheon’s efforts are directed to the “left of the boom,” as Madora put it; in other words, before the explosion, focusing on detection and neutralization of threats. “We try to develop solutions that we can demonstrate and offer JIEDDO and other counter-IED customers within six to 18 months,” he added.
Raytheon has successfully developed systems that have been deployed to warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Madora. He declined to discuss specific systems, technologies, or capabilities but did allow that they “generally include jammers, air and ground surveillance, the fusion of those surveillance capabilities and the sophisticated detection of different types of IEDs.”
JIEDDO’s activities to detect IEDs include the delivery of capabilities for route clearance and explosive detection. JIEDDO has made investments in initiatives to detect and neutralize IEDs at safe standoff ranges.
Among JIEDDO’s accomplishments in this area has been the deployment of a detection system mounted on a Husky armored tactical vehicle. The IED detection kit for Husky vehicles in Afghanistan includes a ground penetrating radar system that can detect metallic and non-metallic objects. The system has successfully identified pressureplate IEDs before they detonated.
The ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and associated technologies mounted on the Husky were provided by a partnership of Exponent, an engineering firm headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., and 3D-Radar, a technology company based in Norway.
Ground-penetrating radar was originally developed for civilian applications such as road engineering and archeology. “The GPR sensor would collect the data,” explained John Pye, director of the technology development practice at Exponent, “and then it would be brought back to the lab or an office for an expert to analyze. For route clearance in an area of military operations, you want to be able to use data in real time by a trained soldier on the ground and not have to wait for a GPR expert to get involved.”
The U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force asked Exponent to come up with a counter-IED solution and Exponent brought 3D-Radar into the picture. “The first step was to add software and processing around the system to add a real-time capability to the GPR,” said Pye. “3D-Radar also had to re-engineer its antenna so that it could clear a road lane at one time. We have continued to make improvements all the way along since then.”
3D-Radar produces the antenna and controller and provides the raw GPR signal data. Exponent provides the software that interprets the data and acts as the integrator that puts the package onto the vehicle and supports it down range. The two companies are jointly marketing the system known as Geoscope X.
GPR uses ultra-wide band radar frequencies to detect objects under the ground’s surface. “Reflections of radar waves going through the air are easy to reconstruct,” Pye explained. “But the ground doesn’t want to have radio energy passed through it,” and that can make for a distorted radar picture.
The ultra-wide band frequencies attempt to solve this problem by penetrating the ground with multiple radar frequencies from high to low. “You need low frequencies to see far into the dirt,” said Pye, “but you need spectrum bandwidth to get resolution.”
3D-Radar stands out from its GPR peers, and the reason it was chosen for this project was, according to Pye, because its system sends narrow slices of the frequency spectrum groundward one at a time and rapidly, allowing for a clearer picture to be generated.
Another innovation that employs radar for IED detection uses synthetic aperture radar mounted on airborne platforms and was developed by Northrop Grumman Intelligence Systems with support from the U.S. Air Force’s Aeronautical Systems Center. MB SAR, as the system is called, is a software-defined radar and real-time on-board processing system and supports many missions including locating IEDs, imaging under foliage and into buildings, and detecting changes over a wide area. The ability to survey very large areas in all weather conditions, day or night, and to cue other on-board sensors enables airborne assets to provide real-time, tactically-relevant information directly to troops on the ground.
“Reductions in size, power and weight,” compared to other SAR systems, “allows MB SAR to be installed on platforms such as such as Beechcraft King Air class aircraft,” said Trip Carter, director of the airborne ISR mission area for Northrop Grumman Intelligence Systems.
Unlike air traffic control radar, for example, which sends out beams of energy and receives reflections of that energy that appear as blips on a screen, the antenna of a synthetic aperture radar systems ranges for a period of time across a target area, generating a two-dimensional image. The image is derived from the long track along the flight path to piece together points on the ground.
MB SAR was integrated aboard a U.S. Navy NP-3D Orion aircraft as part of a Naval Research Laboratory program called Project Perseus. The aircraft successfully performed missions as a part of Task Force Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize (ODIN), an ISR group that has operated in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Because the system is software-defined and designed for flexibility, Northrop Grumman’s team was able to rapidly adapt to mission requirements as well as integrating, testing and calibrating the system in less than five weeks.
“Simply put, it has been used as part of a change detection process,” said Carter. “It involves looking at a new image, comparing it to a prior image as a baseline and identifying changes. MB SAR is used to cue the system to put an eyeball [such as an optical sensor] on the target from an aircraft in near real-time to confirm that something is there.”
The advantage of MB SAR is that it can cover very large areas and provide very highly accurate and precise images. “Because we operate at the lower end of the frequency regime we are able to see a lot of territory,” said Carter. “The system then maps out the changes that occurred over the previous flight.”
Another advantage of MB SAR is that it has been integrated on a single airborne platform with other sensors. “The sensors are able to work collaboratively,” said Carter. “The on-board processing capability is able to cross cue different sensors to collect different kinds of data in a multiintelligence approach.”
While MB SAR endeavors to put an eye in the sky to identify IEDs, DiagNose, a company based in Neuvy, France, puts a nose to the ground, literally, as part of the same effort. DiagNose provides specially trained dogs, as well as training to their handlers, who are then deployed as part of route-clearing efforts in an area of hostilities.
“IED detection dogs are trained for six months for the special task of remotely detecting IEDs,” said Jan Zoodsma, the company’s chief technology officer and former commander of the police dog unit at the National Police of the Netherlands. “The dogs are trained according to customer operational requirements including the list of target substances. We make a lot of effort to train the dogs in a terrain and climate conditions similar to the ones of the country of destination.”
The trained dogs are able to be sent forward to a distance of up to 200 meters, and work along a trail, road or in open space. “DiagNose training is based on combat and work experience of trainers from four countries and from various milieus, such as army, police and customs,” said Zoodsma. “DiagNose trains the dogs by a positive reward method. All IED detection dogs are trained to be indifferent to firearms and shooting sounds, to scattered food and to other animals.” The dogs may be sold to customers or provided as part of a service package.
The handlers are trained with their previously trained dogs. “The course period is nine to 12 weeks, depending on the level of experience the trainees have and on the operational task the team will be performing,” said Zoodsma. “At the end of the handlers course, after successfully passing a certification test, the IED detection teams are ready to operate in real combat scenarios.”
When out in the field, the canine search relies on the animal’s nose and is not performed in conjunction with any ancillary technologies. “Once the dog indicates a suspected IED,” said Zoodsma, “the unit operates its routine of dealing with detected IEDs and this may include disposal technologies.”
For the future, JIEDDO foresees the development of new sensor and data exploitation technologies as an important component of its technology development effort. “JIEDDO continues to explore new sensors and exploitation methods,” said Smith, “to demonstrate the ability to detect command wires, disturbed earth, signs of emplacement activity and other observables associated with emplaced IEDs, to include integration and demonstration of these capabilities on both aerial and ground platforms.”
One such future system for detecting IEDs is being developed by Lattice Incorporated, a technology company based in Pennsauken, N.J., under contract to the U.S. Air Force. Lattice will develop a software/hardware interface to fuse data from various heterogeneous sensors as well as a detection engine. Various data will be combined to enhance situational awareness and to develop countermeasures to defeat IEDs.
“The project is in its exploratory phase right now,” said Ken Kaizer, president of Lattice Government Services. “We are working on building a proof of concept that would integrate a chemical-type detector, with ground penetrating radar, video, metal detectors and perhaps others, and combine those with a proprietary cognitive engine that would provide more robust detection of IED threats.”
Lattice already has experience integrating chemical and biological threat detectors and fusing data from those two. The same concept informs the current counter-IED project.
One challenge associated with the project is the decision whether the sensors need to be hardwired to each other or whether they could communicate with each other and have their data fused. “The sensors have to be plugged into something,” said Kaizer. “But we expect the software solution to be the more elegant aspect of this project. The cognitive engine we will be building means that users will not just have gobs of data but that they will have something useful and usable.”
Lattice has experience building neural networks— complex information processing systems that learn from experience—that could serve as a model for the cognitive engine that will be put to use in this project. “We need to figure out what sort of display will be provided to users once the data is fused,” said Kaizer. “Will it give a simple warning or will it be more robust? Depending on the type of data we have, we could possibly geolocate the IED and provide information about its components.”
One thing that is definitely on Lattice’s agenda is to port the software it develops to small devices. “That helps us too, when we are writing the software,” said Kaizer. “We don’t want the footprint to be so big that it can only fit on a large system. We want to write the software for any kind of display that the users want.”
3D-Radar and Exponent are working on a next generation Geoscope X system that will include multiple sensors in addition to ground penetrating radar that would be adaptable to a variety of tactical military vehicles. “GPR is not a silver bullet,” said Thomas Örnevik, director of sales and marketing at 3D-Radar. “It is difficult or impossible to use in certain soil conditions. One approach we are taking is to combine the GPS sensor with a metal detector and camera on the sensor head. With a camera, the operator has a view of the surface just below the antenna. The disturbance of the top soil combined with a radar indication of something below the surface gives the operator a clear indication of a potential threat buried there.”
The next generation system will also be smaller, faster and perform better, according to Pye. “There was little size constraint when our goal was to put the system on the Husky vehicle,” he explained. “The objective was to get the capability out there fast. Now there is interest in putting the system on remote controlled and robotic vehicles. The new system will be suitcase sized. It can be put on any vehicle moving through high-threat area.” Pye expects the next generation Geoscope X to be ready to go within three to six months.
The Raytheon IED Task Force is currently working on some new solutions with JIEDDO that “could be potential game changers,” said Madora. “We are working with some smaller companies on developing some specific IED detection capabilities that fill requirements coming out of the theater. We hope to have this deployed within the next six months.”
Raytheon is also working on a solution with JIEDDO involving a very sensitive explosive detection capability against suicide bombers, sometimes referred to as “personnel-borne IEDs.” “Depending on how that work goes, we expect that to be deployed overseas as well,” said Madora. “Our goal is to continue to work with JIEDDO to make sure we understand capabilities gaps and wartime requirements. We will use our Raytheon core capabilities and will team with small businesses when possible to come up with solutions that we believe we can field and make a difference to warfighters.”
JIEDDO has recently shifted its technology emphasis to a focus on capabilities to characterize the human networks that support the employment of IEDs. “It has proven effective to engage the IED-making process as far upstream of the device emplacement as possible,” said Smith. “While detecting emplaced devices remains important, big dividends result from a holistic effort to disrupt the supporting network.”
The key to an eventual victory will come from the exploitation of information, Smith added. “The people who deploy IEDs or conduct suicide bombing attacks are supported by extensive networks of financiers, bomb builders, strategic planners and recruiters,” she explained. “Understanding the networks, following the money and tracking the movement of people and materials will be critical to winning the fight against IEDs.
“U.S. forces and intelligence services are collecting vast amounts of information of all types,” Smith said. “The problem is that there are not enough analysts to sift through all this data. JIEDDO has a critical need for automated tools that can successfully ingest massive amounts of information of all kinds and identify the key information and trends.”