The combat vehicles planned for 2012 and beyond offer the Army
a valuable opportunity to enhance defensive capabilities against
chemical, biological and radiological threats, said an Army expert.
These vehicles are in the early stages of design under the so-called
FCS program, or future combat system. The platforms are expected
to weigh 20 tons or less, compared to today’s 70-ton tanks,
and will be equipped with advanced communications networks and sensors,
so that a platoon of vehicles can fight together as a “system
of systems.”
The Army currently operates and continues to develop an assortment
of detectors and protective gear to safeguard soldiers and vehicles
against nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) agents.
Under current plans, the Army and the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency will invest nearly a billion dollars on FCS research
and development during the next five years. That makes the FCS an
ideal vehicle to integrate NBC defenses into a “network-centric
FCS concept,” said Jim H. Zarzycki, director of the Edgewood
Chemical Biological Center. The center has worked on chemical and
biological warfare since World War I and “stands ready to
assist” in the FCS effort, Zarzycki told an industry conference
in Tysons Corner, Va.
“For the first time, there is a chance for NBC sensors to
be integrated into the whole Army sensor system, and NBC will be
part of the command and control of the Army,” he said. “There
is a rich technology base out there. ... There is an opportunity
for an overall NBC net-centric approach.”
He estimated that the Army will invest $100 million between 2001
and 2004 on NBC-related research that “should fit directly
into FCS.”
The Defense Department’s NBC program includes participation
from all the military services.
The FCS program, said Zarzycki, should address individual and collective
protection by providing more capable filtration systems. The FCS’
ability to disseminate NBC detection information throughout the
battlefield also will help avoid contamination, he said. Another
focal point for FCS should be “NBC battle management,”
explained Zarzycki. That means providing communications links among
the participants in the battle so that everyone receives accurate
threat data.
“You need to tie together the sensor information, get it
to trigger a warning or get detection to trigger contamination avoidance,”
said Zarzycki. The next step would be to tie the NBC sensors to
non-NBC sensors, such as radar, to get a “situational awareness
picture” of enemy and friendly units. An unmanned aircraft,
for example, would fly over a manufacturing plant, and the sensor
data would tell the commander whether there is a chemical agent
cloud in the atmosphere. The information from the NBC sensors, said
Zarzycki, “needs to be married to information from other sensors,
such as meteorological, so they can predict how that cloud will
move and disperse downwind and do hazard prediction in real time.”
Filtration System
Experts at Edgewood believe the Army’s lightweight combat
vehicles would benefit from technologies such as a regenerative
NBC filtration system, which protects against liquid, aerosol and
vapor threats. “For years, the solution for filtration has
been a single-pass filter system. We use activated carbon to absorb
the vapor, and a high-efficiency glass fiber filter for particulate
material,” noted Zarzycki. “That approach is used for
gas masks or large filter systems that are found shipboard. It’s
a simple, low cost approach. But the problem is the logistics. You
need to replace filters regularly.” The filters also tend
to malfunction in high-humidity environments.
A regenerative filtration system eliminates the need to replace
filters, he added. It also helps control temperature and humidity
levels.
The bulk of the investments has gone into chemical and biological
detectors, Zarzycki said, both for point detection and standoff
detection. The systems will be useful for the FCS. Point detection
means the contaminant comes into physical contact with the sensor
and it is analyzed. In standoff detection, the sensor sees the contaminant
at a distance and recognizes it, but the contaminant never comes
in contact with the sensor.
For point detection of chemical agents, researchers at Edgewood
are working on technologies such as ion mobility spectrometers,
surface acoustic wave devices and mass spectrometers. For biological
detection, said Zarzycki, “our tech base is focusing on a
single platform that gives you both chemical and biological detection.”
One approach to this “single platform concept” is a
system called Py-GC-IMS, which stands for pyrolisis-gas chromatography-ion
mobility spectrometer. It is a shoebox-size biological and chemical
agent detector, which weighs about 10 pounds. The system works on
the principle of “sniff and tell.” Pyrolysis means heating
the biological agent to about 400 degrees Celsius and producing
the sniff vapors. For chemical agents, the vapors are present in
the air, so no heating is required. The sniffed vapors are injected
into a gas chromatography column, where the vapors are separated
into individual compounds. These components are sequentially introduced
into a standard military-issue chemical agent monitor—called
ICAM—which identifies the compounds.
So far, said Zarzycki, “we have had some success in biological
detection.” Field trials of the portable detector were scheduled
to take place in Canada this year.
Edgewood officials estimate that the system will cost about $10,000,
if produced in large quantities. It currently costs $30,000, when
produced in-house.
Mass spectrometry is the technology currently used in the Army’s
Fox armored vehicle, which gained notoriety during the Persian Gulf
War in 1991. The next generation, said Zarzycki, will include a
chemical-biological mass spectrometer. “For the first time
in the field, the same instrument will be able to do chemical and
biological detection.”
For biological detection, explained Zarzycki, “you need an
efficient air collection system. That has been a serious challenge.”
Standoff detection work largely has been based on infrared (IR)
technology. “We’ve made advances in putting IR sensors
on unmanned aerial vehicles,” he noted. “The passive
approach works very well for chemical detection but doesn’t
work very well for biological detection. For that, we need an active
LIDAR system.” LIDAR (laser imaging detection and ranging
system) is a high-resolution electro-optical imaging device. LIDAR
works for chemical detection as well, said Zarzycki. “We are
hopeful we will build a detector for both chemical and biological
detection. We are trying to get a small enough system that can be
mounted on a vehicle.” The weight goal is 200 pounds, and
it would be able to pick up a biological agent cloud out to 3 kilometers.
The combination of ultraviolet laser and IR has been demonstrated
successfully in larger systems, said Zarzycki. The laser can distinguish
particles, discriminating road dust from biological agents, allowing
an operator to determine that a cloud contains a warfare agent,
versus a natural biological substance such as pollen.