Gwyn Winfield looks at the UK MoD’s new biological surveillance and collector systems
Silver at the BSCS T
he UK recently signed the biological surveillance and collector system (BSCS – or Bis-
cuss, if you want to try and fit in) into initial operating capability (IOC). The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has bought six systems, each composed of 15 collectors and one mobile lab. The 15 dry filter collectors are made by Williams, a company famous for Formula 1 racing cars, and the rest of the system is made by 24 other firms, 18 of which are SMEs, all brought together by key systems integrator Thales. Basically, the process is that the
collectors sample continuously for an classified time, whereupon military forces, some from 20 Wing of the RAF and in the future from (which unit is currently unknown due to an impending SDSR) from the army, will turn up, pull the sample and take it, and others, to a mobile lab. The mobile lab is made from two ISO containers and the active technology inside is lateral flow assays and Biofire’s Filmarray. The cross- trained crew will all come from 20 Wing and be either regular or reserve, depending on readiness, and will be deployed to Gibraltar in November for operational testing and to refine the doctrine. The lab conforms to CL3 and has two cabinets for sample preparation (in case one is contaminated) and one for testing, plus an internal and external power supply. That is about the limit of it, but the MoD is very excited and declares that it is ‘game-changing’. I find the phrase game-changing
hyperbolic. Until recently the UK’s biological detection capability was the integrated biological detection system (IBDS), a lorry-based mobile lab, that requires hugely expensive assays and training. When I say hugely expensive I mean it. The bio-consumables for IBDS tend to come in at a whopping £18m around every two years (
http://www.smithsdetection.com/ index.php?option=com_k2&view= item&id=329:smiths-detection-wins-
%C2%A318m-uk-military-order-for-bio- consumables&Itemid=1535 &lang=en#.WUz-JYWcFPY
https://www.asmag.com/rankings/ m/
content.aspx?id=10995) so getting that puppy off the books has to be a win! When it comes to biological
detection, however, it is less clear to see who is leading the pack. For example the French army awarded €35m to EADS for its DetectBio project in 2009 (see CBRNe World Autumn 2009), and the vital point biological detection system (VPBDS see CBRNe World Spring 2011) was awarded to General Dynamics Canada and delivered to the Canadians in 2008. The US has been operating Biowatch at great cost and variable success since 2001 and the DoD has had incarnations of its joint biological point detection system since 2003. Even Thales has its own miniature collector (
https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/ default/files/asset/document/ Biodosimetre_Mai2010.pdf) and variant of a BSCS-type system (
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/ worldwide/defence/cerber-beacon). This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, and doesn’t contain all mobile labs, but these extant systems approach the ‘detect to warn’ paradigm in much the same way than BSCS. Even within the UK BSCS can’t be
considered unique. In 2005 I was writing for NBC International about something called the integrated sensor management system (ISMS - see
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/ august-2005-online/serco-wins-13- million-sensor-contract/), which was going to link wetted wall cyclones with Biral’s Verotect biological detector. More recently in 2010 Biral was awarded the contract for portable integrated battlespace biological detection technology (PIBBDT), a technology demonstrator using, like ISMS, liquid samples interrogated by light scattering surface plasmon resonance (LS-SPR) and
the SpectroSens microchip sensor (
http://www.cbrnetechindex.com/Print/ 4343/Biral/PIBBDT--Portable-Integrated- Battlespace-Biological-Detection- Technology). While there are technical differences in the systems, all three (ISMS, PBBDT and BSCS) were providing a detect to warn capability, though at different places on the time to detect vs confidence spectrum. Much as I respect Biofire’s Film Array and Thales’ ability to integrate a wide range of technically competent partners, it’s difficult to get too excited about commercial off the shelf technology (COTS): calling it game- changing is a step too far. That said it is a continuation of the
MoD’s biological detection and identification capability, which has been a key offering to Nato response force operations, and frees up the hideous bi- annual sums that Smiths Detection raked… sorry, drew, from the MoD. So in all honesty it is a step forward, albeit not the giant leap for mankind that either Thales or the MoD would have you believe. In terms of the system itself, it is
going to be ‘on demand’ in that there will be a number of units held at high readiness for deployment, and others at far lower readiness levels. This allows the MoD to cushion the full operating capability (FOC), as it doesn’t need to train everyone at once, achieving FOC later this year and then as the need requires further teams can be trained up. Wing Commander ‘Seb’ Kendall, SO1 CBRN delivery for the MoD, explained: “A number systems will be held from high to lower readiness. Systems at lower readiness will be brought to higher preparedness with the training of their respective crews, to include reservists taking place within their readiness profiles. FOC will be reached later this year when all systems have been delivered and personnel from within 20 Wing trained and/or identified for training in accordance with their readiness status.”
CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017
www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017 58 CBRNe WORLD June 2017
www.cbrneworld.com
CBRNeWORLD
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