LOOKING FOR THE SILVER BULLET

The quest to find concealed explosives in Iraq is making progress, but the pace is so slow that both military and aerospace industry officials openly fret about the lack of a definitive solution.

Nevertheless, both continue searching furiously for new ways to find, incapacitate and remove improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that are inflicting a steady toll on coalition forces and, increasingly, Iraqi civilians. In fact, some participants say the search for countermeasures has become chaotic and they worry that there's not enough discrimination in funding technologies with the most promise.

A SINGLE PENTAGON announcement inquiring about IED detection technology recently drew more than 200 bidders. And in a move to hasten the transfer of possible solutions to the battlefield, many of the initiatives are also being pursued by warfighting organizations instead of through traditional acquisition channels.

Meanwhile, the military is pushing hard to find solutions by better linking and fusing information that's already being collected on the battlefield.

"In Iraq, it's definitely a game of cross-cueing sensors and intelligence data," says a veteran UAV builder and operator. For example, the Air Force's high-flying U-2 radars, with their relatively wide field of view, are being used to cue radars on tactical aircraft that are more narrowly focused. The U-2's radar has an "agile" spot mode with a roughly 1-ft. resolution that allows it to scan a series of 2 X 2-km. areas for suspicious objects as it flies along.

From a U.S. base north of Baghdad, the Army is operating a small number of "Horned Owl" C-12 aircraft. The aircraft they fly have a ventral radome carrying a Sandia/General Atomics-developed Lynx radar that's also carried on some unmanned aerial vehicles. The standard Lynx radar operates in part of the Ku band (15.2-18.2 GHz.) and has a 3-4-in. resolution within its small field of regard. However, the Horned Owl's radar has been upgraded for even greater resolution. The aircraft also carries a stabilized gimbal sensor ball with an infrared camera. Each night, the aircraft fly convoy routes and send the information to a facility on the ground so that analysts can search for any changes that would indicate IED activity.

Horned Owl is just one of a number of projects that are assigned "Horned" as part of their code-name designation. Moreover, the Pentagon is rushing a larger version of the system--Horned Owl II--into service that can fly higher to cover greater areas and stay up longer with a larger payload. Aircrews wear a patch showing a black owl's head with bright green eyes.

Some military officials contend the Horned Owl has an earth-penetrating capability to find IEDs and, possibly, hidden weapons caches. But radar specialists believe the high water table in Iraq and the radar's frequency would limit penetration.

"There are lots of salts in the water and the sand is not dry," confirms a Pentagon radar specialist. "To get ground penetration, you need to use L-band frequencies [of 1 GHz. or lower]."