Germ warfare: Pentagon chem-bio program expands to homeland missions.

The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security are seeking to homogenize the equipment that military units and local first responders employ to detect and neutralize toxic agents.

The Defense Department, as a result, plans to shift resources to non-traditional chem-bio areas, such as cleaning up contaminated sites following natural disasters, officials said.

"As we look at our ability to respond to requirements under the homeland defense strategy, we're going to need those kinds of capabilities. So we're working very closely with DHS on a number of applications of this technology in ways different than we had been applying them," said Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Reeves, who oversees the procurement of all Pentagon chemical and biological defense equipment.

The Defense Department plans to pick up projects within the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) technology area that are unrelated to its traditional mission, said Col. Ben Hagar, deputy director for science and technology at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

"That's a broader set of challenges than we have had traditionally," said Reeves. Rather than simply providing an alert for a chemical or biological warfare attack, "we've got to figure out how to provide protection and decontamination of some of these materials."

The Defense Department and DHS, along with the U.S. Postal Service, have signed a memorandum of understanding that provides a framework for coordinated detection and response efforts in the event of a bio-terror attack, Reeves' spokesman said.

Other joint agency projects include the development of next-generation biological weapons detection devices and testing mobile interior systems to work toward national standards for building decontamination.

As operations in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, Reeves must also contend with equipment requirements.

The need for rapid identification of potentially harmful chemical and biological agents--and increasingly, toxic industrial chemicals and materials--in the battlefield is urgent, he said.

"The commanders are faced everyday with folks walking into buildings and finding stuff. And what they really want to know is, 'what is it?' And secondly, 'is it dangerous?' And thirdly, if it's dangerous, 'what do I do about it?'" he said.

The Armv's chemical corps has dealt with what Reeves terms the "classic" chemical or biological weapons threats, such as anthrax, VX, and other agents. But it traditionally has not dealt with the toxic industrial chemical situations found in developed nations. Those tasks have been relegated to specialized teams, such as the Marine Corps' chemical biological incident response force, the Army's technical escort units and the National Guard's civil support teams.

But Reeves said the Army plans to move the chemical corps closer to the high-end capability found in those specialized units.

"My challenge, I think, is to provide equipment that's going to lessen the training work. Right now the very best equipment that we provide requires a lot of training. It requires a lot of expertise behind it... But we want to try to reduce that burden," said Reeves.

Part of that challenge is to ensure such equipment conforms to the size limitations of vehicles, such as Humvees, which have been outfitted with additional armor.

"We have for a long time said that we want things smaller. Now we are really forced into that situation. And we have to package our equipment so that it fits inside up-armored Humvees," said Reeves.

While trying to equip the service with better detection and protection capabilities, Reeves also must work to standardize that equipment.

Last fall's hurricanes highlighted the importance of having interoperable capabilities between military and civilian first responders. The office deployed equipment to the affected areas to identify, toxic materials and analyze unknown substances in the field.

"The larger issues we were concerned with, particularly in the Houston-Galveston area, were the toxic industrial chemicals, toxic industrial materials," said Reeves. Those two areas happened to have a large concentration of superfund sites that posed an uncontained threat to first responders, he said. The office provided simulations to help determine how hazardous materials released in the region might move through the air and water.

In addition to providing detection equipment, the office also deployed a communications system to National Guard civil support teams in the region.

"The unified command suite has worked superbly in providing that switch between the civilian sector and our military sector, and I would anticipate that we're going to see more calls for that kind of communications interoperability," said Reeves.

The joint program executive office for chemical and biological defense is working with the DHS standards office to establish the same sort of interoperability, he said.

"We are actively engaged with that office to ensure that we get common standards," Reeves said. "Obviously there are going to be instances where those standards are not going to be exact matches. But to the extent that we can, we are very much focused on ensuring that we have common standards between the military and our civilian groups."

For example, he said, "you've got a level 'A' suit. You need to have an oxygen tank that you could refill from a common filling station. You find that because of a lack of standards in that area, some oxygen tanks will work on those filling stations, and some won't."

Reeves has been working on the standards issue for some time. Progress has been slow because the effort involves numerous private and public agencies, and "all parties must agree on each step in the process, from the units of measure to the type and method of testing and validation," his office said.

"I think we're getting better at it," Reeves told National Defense. "I think establishing floors for these standards" is important, and as we learn more, "those floors are going to get lower."

RELATED ARTICLE: Laser-based sensor will sniff out chemicals on the move.

Scientists at the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Aberdeen, Md., are working on a next-generation, laser-based chemical detector capable of operating in reconnaissance vehicles while traveling at high speeds.

The $47.5 million project, which began last January, is an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration, or ACTD, a process that aims to expedite research and development with a quick turnaround period of two to four years.

The ACTD has two components: the creation of a joint contaminated surface detector and the integration of available detectors onto an unmanned ground vehicle, said Peter Annunziato, technical manager.

The joint contaminated surface detector uses an ultraviolet laser, mounted underneath a vehicle about 2 feet from the ground. It fires 25 times a second. When the laser hits the chemicals, it excites the electrons in those chemicals, causing a scattering of light, known as a Raman shift. A camera and telescope detect the shift of electrons back to their original orbits, which produces a spectrum that is unique to each chemical compound, explained Annunziato.

The JCSD takes about 40 milliseconds to make a detection, he said. But factoring in processing time and the vehicle's traveling speed, the system will take about two seconds to sound an alarm.

Using a laboratory model, scientists have been able to make detections while traveling up to 45 kilometers per hour.

The need for a new system was illustrated during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Maneuver commanders, on orders to reach objectives as quickly as possible, would not wait for the Fox reconnaissance armored vehicles to make a chemical detection, which often required a lot of time and heavy maintenance, said Annunziato.

"They just decided, 'chemicals are chemicals, we'll have to deal with it,' and they charged ahead," he said. "That's not the idea. The idea is, this is supposed to find it first and warn them."

The chemical detector used by soldiers in Iraq relies on a double-wheel sampling system. Two silicon wheels, hanging from the back of the Fox vehicle, roll along the ground one at a time, picking up liquid samples. The samples are transferred to a heated probe that vaporizes the liquid and then analyzed using the MM-1 Mobile Mass Spectrometer.

"That takes a lot of time, plus the vehicle has to go slow, because those wheels, they're bouncing around or they're criss-crossing. Sometimes they fall off," and a soldier has to physically reach out and replace it, said Annunziato.

Another problem is that the system can only detect chemicals in liquid form, he said.

Because it's not dependent on surface contact, the JCSD will be able to identify chemicals in liquid and solid states.

In tests, the detector has detected droplets as small as .5 millimeters, said Annunziato.

Edgewood scientists have programmed the JCSD to detect and identify 20 chemical agents, 30 toxic industrial chemicals, nine interferents and six surfaces using its on-board library. Annunziato said the system also has the capability to detect unknown chemicals.

"If it sees something that looks suspicious, the JCSD can note the spectra of it," and notify the operator to collect a sample for further analysis, he said. After the sample is identified, the operator can reprogram the system to give an alarm.

The initial JCSD laboratory model stood five to six feet tall. Scientists have compacted it to 2-feet by 2-feet by 2.5-feet dimensions to fit into the Humvee variant of a new joint service light nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) reconnaissance system, currently in low-rate production.

The downsized JCSD is being tested, said Annunziato.

"We're shooting for a high probability of 92 percent" of detecting contamination that may be present, he said. "We think we've got it, but of course, we need to do more extensive testing to get statistical sample sizes."

In addition to JCSD, the team is working simultaneously on integrating a suite of government and commercial detectors onto an unmanned ground vehicle.

The team looked at both the Talon and the Packbot, small robots in use in the Middle East for explosive ordnance disposal missions. The Packbot, a 65-pound tracked robot manufactured by iRobot, was selected as the vehicle because it "was more convenient for building a module package," said Annunziato. The team, however, plans to build a package that will be compatible with both robots.

The module consists of an LCD 3.2E chemical warfare agent detector, a MultiRAE Plus gas monitor, an AN/UDR-14 Radiac gamma detector, a temperature and humidity sensor and sorbent tubes for collecting samples-instruments that a dismounted soldier might carry when exploring potentially hazardous areas that cannot be reached by a reconnaissance vehicle.

"We're not trying to put Fox capabilities onto the robot. That would be several generations away," said Annunziato.

The robot eliminates the need for soldiers to be placed in harm's way, for example, when probing buildings in Iraq or caves in Afghanistan.

"It can be the first to look around corners, see if someone's there, and then sniff around to determine if there's anything there that can hurt people as they follow along," said Annunziato.

The unmanned system is designed to be controlled by a dismounted soldier using a portable operational control unit. The Packbot, equipped with a video camera, runs on batteries, and can transmit data and maneuver wirelessly within 1,000 meters, in the line-of-sight. In tests at the Edgewood facility, the team was able to operate it through two doors, said Annunziato. However, if communications are lost, the robot carries a 200-meter fiber optic line that can be tethered to the control unit.

Next year, the operational control unit will be integrated into the reconnaissance vehicle so that soldiers can manipulate the robot without setting foot outside. "This will save the soldier from dismounting and getting in harm's way, either from hostile fire or chemical contamination," said Annunziato.

If the technology demonstration is successful, Annunziato said the JCSD would transition into a program of record and either move into production or additional development and into soldiers' hands. It eventually would be incorporated into light armored vehicles, both the Marine Corps' LAV and the Army's Stryker.

Field trials for the ACTD will take place at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah between April and May.

Completing its tour in Iraq, the 95th Chemical Company, based in Fort Richardson, Alaska, will conduct operational testing of the JCSD and robotic systems on post in July. The fully integrated system will be tested in 2007.