As the nation steps up its efforts to cope with the threat of nuclear,
biological and chemical attacks, U.S. armed services and homeland
security units are modernizing their fleets of vehicles designed
to help detect the presence of toxic materials before they can harm
combat troops, first responders or civilians.
• The Fox NBC reconnaissance vehicle—used by the Army
and Marines since the Gulf War—is getting a makeover.
• Plans are being made to provide a lighter platform, more
suitable to city streets, by adapting the Humvee and a version of
the Army’s Stryker light armored vehicle.
• Local emergency-response teams around the country are buying
civilian trucks and vans and packing them with the latest NBC sensors
and communications gear.
Altogether, the two services have 120 Foxes, which they have been
upgrading gradually since 1996. General Dynamics Land Systems, of
Sterling Heights, Mich., has been installing enhanced chemical detection,
global positioning and autonomous navigation systems.
The addition of a stand-off detector allows early warning of airborne
contamination up to three miles from the vehicle, according to John
G. Petty, director of GDLS’s Fox program. Also included is
a new automated sensor suite, which allows the vehicle’s crew
to be reduced from four to three, he said.
Thus far, 97 Foxes either already have been upgraded or are under
contract to have the work done by 2004 said the Army’s product
manager for NBC reconnaissance systems, Lt. Col. Donald J. Burnett.
Just last August, the company received a $26 million contract for
11 of them.
Since the terrorist attacks, the pace seems to be picking up, according
to Petty. “We think that the Army now has an interest in completing
the fleet,” he said.
The Fox is a six-wheeled armored personnel carrier equipped to
detect, identify and mark areas of nuclear or chemical contamination
and report its presence immediately, Petty explained. But on its
own, it cannot detect and report biological contamination—such
as anthrax spores—he said. “The technology for that
is just being developed.”
The Fox, however, can gather samples of suspected biological contamination
from as far away as five kilometers, Petty noted. Those samples
then can be submitted to a laboratory for later analysis.
The 20-ton Fox can move quickly to investigate suspected contamination
sites, Petty said. It is capable of 65 mph on the highway, and it
can swim waterways at 6 mph.
Hazards are reduced by an air-conditioning system designed to keep
out contaminants, Petty said. “Crew members can work in their
shirt sleeves, without protective clothing,” he said. “That’s
a pretty attractive option in a desert climate like Afghanistan
or Iraq.”
The United States has struggled to improve its defenses against
chemical weapons since U.S. troops suffered heavy casualties during
gas attacks in World War I, according to a 2001 report issued by
the office of the secretary of defense. In the 1950s, it began developing
a detection and warning system, and in the late 1970s, it fielded
the first U.S. automatic chemical alarm, known as the M-8.
In 1984—about the time when Iraq used chemical weapons against
Iran and its own Kurdish population—the Army began studying
the idea of a mobile NBC reconnaissance system, the report explained.
The service tested a German version, known as the Fuchs NBC reconnaissance
vehicle. When the Persian Gulf War broke out, Germany donated 60
copies of the Fuchs to the United States.
The U.S. version—renamed the Fox—”was the most
sophisticated, technically complex piece of chemical detection equipment
that the United States used in Operation Desert Shield and Desert
Storm,” the report said.
The heart of the Fox system is the MM-1 Mobile Mass Spectrometer.
It analyzes air or ground samples for the possible presence of liquid
chemical warfare agents by drawing air through a sampler positioned
on the outside of the vehicle to the MM-1 detection unit, which
then studies the substance and displays the results on a video screen.
The Fox surveys for a list of chemical warfare agents most likely
to be present, given the threat. The usual suspects include sarin,
soman, mustard, lewisite and cyclosarin.
The Fox, however, had its limitations during the war, the report
said. It was designed to detect, sample and analyze liquid agents
on the ground. While it could detect agents in the air, it did so
at a slower pace. It might not do so “in time to prevent ...
casualties among unprotected personnel,” according to the
report.
The vehicle also had difficulty distinguishing between chemical
agents and airborne contaminants, such as diesel fumes, vehicle
exhausts and smoke from burning oil wells. In addition, the Fox
crews had received insufficient training to understand the vehicle’s
capabilities and limitations, the report said.
The result, the report noted, was a number of false alarms and
complaints that the Foxes failed to protect some U.S. personnel
from noxious fumes, resulting in so-called “Gulf War illnesses.”
A decade later, the Defense Department has not been able to identify
the cause of those illnesses.
Since the war, the Army has improved equipment and training for
the Fox, officials said. An M-21 remote sensing chemical agent alarm
has been added to improve the vehicle’s vapor detection, providing
earlier warnings of airborne hazards. The Army now provides more
than 38 hours of MM-1 training and a certifying exam for operators.
Meanwhile, the Marine Corps has been tagged to develop another
vehicle, called the Joint Service Lightweight NBC Reconnaissance
System. The prime contractor is TRW Tactical Systems Division, of
Carson, Calif. This system will be a lighter, less expensive one
that all of the services can use in non-combat situations, such
as peacekeeping, force protection and homeland security, explained
project leader Rudy Olsik, at Marine Corps Systems Command, in Quantico,
Va.
“The lightweight system will be equipped a lot like the Fox,
but it won’t be armored,” Olsik said. Instead of roaming
battlefields, it will be used for such duties as protecting airfields,
base perimeters and seaports, he said.
At present, two versions are in the works, one based on the Humvee
and the other on the Stryker, Olsik said. Plans are to procure 47
Humvees and six Strykers this year for use in initial operational
test and evaluation.
The Stryker version is scheduled to go to reconnaissance units
of the Army’s new initial combat brigade teams by 2005, Olsik
said. The teams also will receive Foxes for use in combat, he said.
Some military units with homeland security responsibilities already
are equipped and trained to deal with NBC events. Examples include
the Marines’ Chemical Biological Incidence Response Force,
at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Md., and the
Army National Guard’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support
Teams. By the end of fiscal year 2003, 32 of those teams are scheduled
to be certified as fully ready to respond to such attacks.
During an emergency, however, deploying these teams take times,
Peter L. Gorman, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers of New
York, told a congressional hearing. Initially, the first to arrive
at a disaster will be the emergency personnel from the nation’s
36,000 local jurisdictions, he said.
“The reality is that these military teams, as capable as
they are, could be hours away,” he said. “Meanwhile,
the firefighters are on the scene within minutes. Thus, it is vital
that all first responders have access to monitoring devices and
be provided with the proper training to use them accurately.”
To meet this need, President Bush has proposed $3.5 billion in
federal grants for state and local first responders in 2003. These
funds—a 1,000 percent increase over 2002—would go specifically
for new equipment and training to improve responses to chemical
and biological events, according to Joe M. Albaugh, director of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They also could used to
help local governments develop comprehensive plans to prepare for
and respond to terrorist attacks, he said.
Many state and local agencies cited a need for new emergency-response
vehicles. Existing vehicles are often old and poorly equipped, officials
said. One fire department in the state of Washington, for example,
told FEMA that it was using a 1975 converted bread truck to respond
to hazardous material incidents.
Even with federal funding, military vehicles—such as the
Fox—are considered too big and expensive for most civilian
organizations, said Petty. “Our view is that the Fox is a
bit of an overkill for domestic use,” he said. “It certainly
could be used to help protect big public events. The Marine CBIRF
unit had two Foxes at the Atlanta Olympics.”
Most fire departments, however, are opting to install NBC sensors
and communications equipment into commercial trucks or vans, which
“are a lot cheaper” than military vehicles, said Jim
Flynn, marketing and sales manager for General Motors Defense.
General Motors, for example, markets a South African-made vehicle—called
the Nyala—which is designed for use by police and fire department
teams and sells for about $300,000, Flynn said. A military light-armored
vehicle would go for perhaps three times that, he said, and a Fox
would cost much more.
The Raytheon Company, in a briefing at the National Press Club
in Washington, D.C., unveiled a new command-and-communication for
first responders that could be used for reconnaissance, according
to Brian McKeon, vice president for command and control.
The full-size, four-wheel-drive vehicle “solves one of the
most difficult problems at any disaster scene,” McKeon said.
“The first responder needs to communicate.”
Too often, he said, the situation commander arrives on site with
too little information or the wrong information and is unable to
communicate with all of the emergency teams. After the attack on
the Pentagon, for example, teams from 10 jurisdictions responded,
trying to communicate with different technologies, on different
radio frequencies, using four different spectrums, McKeon said.
“It didn’t work ... It couldn’t work,”
said Edward P. Plaugher, fire chief of Arlington, Va. In the end,
he said, “we relied on communications technology perfected
by ancient Greeks—carrying messages on foot.” The Raytheon
vehicle’s communications suite includes:
• A satellite phone that can connect via 52 low-orbit satellites
to land-based phone systems from anywhere in the world.
• Cellphone technology supporting three standard systems,
Verizon, Cingular and AT&T.
• Software programmable radios that can handle the usual
police, fire and military frequencies.
• Two wireless local area networks, one for voice and one
for video.
A computer controls the entire system, allowing interoperability,
McKeon said. “This means that a firefighter can talk to a
police officer, using a different radio, as if they were using the
same system.”
While the vehicle does not include equipment to analyze NBC hazards,
McKeon said, Raytheon is developing a number of handheld devices
for this purpose. The company’s lightweight, portable thermal-imaging
cameras were used at the World Trade Center to help responders see
through smoke and darkness and detect heat, he said.