The music of the Ainur


We have some partners that are interested in near contact screening, for example explosives on surfaces, so that is something that we have added to the programme that wasn’t part of our original BAA. We won’t test beyond 30m but there are a lot of scaling laws and some partners are interested in looking at plumes at longer distances. The big limitation in distance is that because we are an active system we need to get laser power out and back and Simarils requires class one eye safe at the output aperture. At some point that is limiting as you can only put out so many photons before you fall off the lidar curve. Were you to relax that requirement and have eye safe of 5m from the output aperture you could get longer distance, so we are doing some parametric calculations to scope that out though we wouldn’t build a test system as it would run at a higher laser power than our metrics allow.” Again current standoff detectors


tend to be vehicle mounted, and while standoff identifiers of the type that Silmarils is trying to create don’t exist their baby brothers are either vehicle mounted or at least a hefty backpack (for example Alakai’s CPEDs or PRIED - https://www.alakaidefense.com/ solutions). As you might recognise by now, IARPA laughs at such constraints, and has far more ambitious plan for its system. “What we are demonstrating with the five to 30m standoff prototype is our phase three goal of 12 x 12 x 18in (305 x 305 x 457mm) and this includes battery operation; a backpack or tripod mounted size. “ “Probably two different flavours of


prototype will be coming out. We have one performer in phase two that we have rescoped and have looking at passive illumination a handheld device that can be used for forensic analysis, in car trunks etc. The BAA metrics for the five to 30m variant are going to be more backpack, and probably half the volume will be the battery, so if you can attach a cord to it and run around then it would be smaller, but we are assuming that you need that ability for short term battery power. If you take the basic physics of the systems we have demonstrated and you decide you want shorter standoff,


because you are doing passive illumination or lower power illumination, then you can use a smaller laser and optics and scale down to a smaller device. We will have that data coming out for the programme but we will only demonstrate the five to 30 metre, as we can’t do everything. We are doing the parametrics for what you could do for closer range and how much bigger it would be to go out to a kilometre and have a bigger laser source.” Other challenges that await


Silmarils are the substrates under the targets. Some will sequester the agent, like bricks or sand, and others have their own IR signature, like car paint. The simpler substrates were tested in phase one, while the more challenging will be done in phases two and three, working up to outdoor testing on “real world” targets, though Dr DeWitt is expecting there to be variable detection thresholds depending on what the substrate is. The long-term future for IARPA and


CBRN is, however, not something Dr DeWitt can predict. Since every programme manager brings their own experience to the portfolio, and there’s no set IARPA vision, whatever happens next will be differently challenging after the DeWitt reign, which ends in 2019/2020. “The next steps will be determined by where we get to in these programmes and it is a little bit early, even for Silmarils, to say exactly how far that library might get. There are a lot of discoveries to be made, we have launched the Morgoth’s Crown prize challenge, for predictions of permutations of spectra from different chemicals put down on surfaces, and the different surface morphologies and different chemical interactions. If we hit certain points in Silmarils that are fundamental challenges not addressed by the programme itself then we would look at launching a second programme. If we meet all Silmarils' BAA metrics we would have a prototype that would have advanced beyond the point where IARPA would take it and we would transition that to the mission partners.” “The ultimate limitation of any


linear spectroscopy like mass and IR spectroscopy, is the dynamic range. You


can address that with MS by doing pre- separation, but ultimately what you prove with the system is limited by the dynamic range and the clutter problem as all your peaks are all over each other, and have to be pulled apart. So some of the 2D IR spectroscopy, the analogue of 2D nuclear magnetic resonance when you get the cross peaks and pull apart all the different compounds from the different information, that is probably the direction that an effort like Silmarils would go for a next step. Once you get a working portable MS system can you improve the resolution to get isotopic identification as well as chemical? How do you start working on the problem of clutter, can you work on different methods of ionisation and the different fragment patterns that those allow so you can pull apart cluttered spectra, rather than needing perfect separation. It is a matter of getting a device that works in the space first and then what physics needs to be addressed to deal with the fundamental limitations of that device.” There are numerous big asks in the


detection portfolio Ms Dewitt is working on, and these have been examined before, often with little success. If her team manages to do half of what they have planned it will be, for once, truly revolutionary. She remains hopeful. “We have not run against any walls and even though it is early stages for both programmes there is a lot of promise. Do I think that we’ll be able to get every single chemical and surface down to 0.1µg/cm²? No, but I think we will be able to get a lot of them there, which is still a significant improvement and we can identify where the sticking points are.” “If we can pull apart seven signatures


can we get ten? If we can fill in some of the current gaps we’ll find the next ones. There is an engineering progression, whereby you get a system in a certain application space that works and you keep making the system better. At some point you run into fundamental physics, or engineering limits and that is where you have to do something different to get around the problem. The role of the ARPAs is to find those places where the natural development course has run into a wall and to fund that difference.”


CBRNe Convergence, Orlando, USA, 6-8 November 2018 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2018 18 CBRNe WORLD February 2018 www.cbrneworld.com


CBRNeWORLD


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