Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

Part I. Background

Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Claude Manley the Technical Director at the Navy managed Joint Service activity (NAVEODTECHDIV) responsible for providing military bomb disposal, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), technicians with the equipment and information used in the emergency neutralization of hazardous devices. We are part of the Naval Ordnance Center.

The traditional role of all military EOD personnel is to find and neutralize “dud" or damaged explosive loaded munitions which are a hazard to operations and require a “oneon-one" response by a highly trained and experienced technical specialist. EOD also deals with terrorist improvised devices, explosive, chemical, radiological and nuclear.

EOD technicians are not normally used to breach land minefields during an assault. Their numbers are too small (3352 in the four services, deployed world wide in small teams) and they are not trained and equipped to operate in contact with enemy forces. (Unique to the Navy, Navy EOD specialists are also divers and are part of the Navy's mine countermeasure system for naval mines). EOD technicians are routinely involved in the neutralization of ordnance and mines left behind by combatant forces. In the context of modern ordnance, the distinction between mines and improved conventional munitions is disappearing, and the traditional role of EOD is expanding to include wide area ordnance decontamination.

The activities of the NAVEODTECHDIV support the EOD specific joint services requirements, part of which address ordnance detection. As part of our continuous assessment of useful technologies we manage an environmental unexploded ordnance (UXO) remediation program for the Army Environmental Center. This program funds companies to demonstrate technologies applicable to locating and recovering ordnance on military firing ranges, both active ( Live Site Demonstrations) and formerly used (Jefferson Proving Ground). We are also providing technical services on site to support the contracting by the Navy for the cleanup of the Kaho'olawe Island bombing range.

Part II. Mine Countermeasures Technology Summary Statement.

The detection of anomalous objects in soil is a difficult technical problem. In WWII mines were made of metal and this feature was exploited by developers of mine detection equipment. Low signature mines (hand crafted shoe box mines) were first used against U. S. Forces during the Korean conflict. In 50 years improvements in manufacturing technology have made possible the high volume, low cost production of low signature mines. Although of limited usefulness now, metal detectors will have an almost non existent mine countermeasures utility in the near future.

The technology is available to support engineering development of a hand held, active metal locator with about five times the detection range, in non conducting soil, of the present family of military locators and mine detectors. This translates into at least an order of magnitude (that is, 10 times) improvement in capability to detect a small metallic mass at a fixed range. Such a detector would cost more by a factor of 3 to 5 and weigh more by a factor

Naval EOD Technology Div. "Hearing on Land Mine Threat in BOSNIA“ 2 of 3

of this locator in quantity would be three or four times the present cost of mine detectors.

Part III. NAVEODTECHDIV Research and Development Technologies.

NAVEODTECHDIV develops and purchases ordnance locators for use on land and in the ocean. Since the majority of ordnance is metal cased, or contains significant quantities of metal, our development focus has been on magnetometry (passive detection of ferrous materials) and low frequency electromagnetic induction (active detection of conducting materials). At present EOD uses operationally two passive and one active hand held locators.

NAVEODTECHDIV has in development for a number of customers the following projects with some long term applicability to the mine countermeasures problem and of only limited usefulness to the immediate problem in BOSNIA:

Center)

--SOCS (an autonomous multi sensor ground survey system) (Army Environmental

--RECORM (a small, 80 lbs., remotely controlled reconnaissance system) (Joint Service EOD Program)

--Autonomous RECORM (autonomous search for ordnance) (Unmanned Ground Vehicle Program)

--BUGS (multiple, low cost, extremely small, unintelligent robots designed to forage for scatterable munitions as a cooperating colony, or to self destruct over mines) (Office of Naval Research) (Marine Corps)

--HTS/SQUID (a hand held, extremely sensitive magnetometer) (Office of Naval

Research)

--ADPULSE (a hand held, advanced technology pulse induction device) (Office of Naval Research)

--Geometrics EM-61 (industry standard geophysical survey

instrument) (Kaho'olawe cleanup)

[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »