Pentagon seeks improved sensors for aerosol attacks
The Defense Department last week launched a crash research program to develop new sensors to rapidly identify-in less than 60 seconds-biological agents dispersed in aerosol form, according to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announcement.
The effort will focus on technologies that can detect optical characteristics, invisible to the naked eye, of biological agents released in vapor or spray form, according to a project description.
DARPA said it is seeking proposals to design and develop "high-risk, high-leverage technologies and prototypes that have the potential to greatly reduce the false alarm rate of trigger sensors for biological warfare agents."
The effort, which is seeking proposals from qualified corporations, research centers, and universities, would support a Pentagon-wide program to develop the first multilayered, nationwide biological detection system to defend highly populated areas from germ warfare.
A primary objective of the multibillion-dollar Biological Defense Homeland Security Support Program, which officially got underway in October at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, is to combine traditional detection techniques such as environmental sensors with medical data from hospitals and health care providers to create an overarching, computerized biological surveillance system. Officials hope to field a prototype as early as next year in Washington.
The newly announced Spectral Sensing of Bio-Aerosols Program is designed to assist that wider effort by providing more effective means to quickly identify biological pathogens released into the air by relying on a series of novel detection techniques.
"A critical component of an effective biological warfare defense is real-time, pre-exposure detection, discrimination, and identification of the full spectrum of threats: spore, bacteria, virus and toxin," according to a Dec. 30 public notice. "The goal of the program is to develop point detection sensors with response times of less than one minute" and with fewer false alarms than current sensors, the notice said.
The program will establish a "government referee" to develop an aerosol test facility. Proposals will be tested against a "matrix of specific threat organisms, the maximum time allowed for detection, the threshold levels of threat quantity and the detector performance."
DARPA will also evaluate sensors' ability to detect biological agents from a distance.
The project places emphasis on new detection techniques capable of identifying the optical characteristics of a biological release. Little work has been done in this area and as a result the level of effectiveness remains unclear, according to DARPA.
"Investigators of biosensors have long held the belief that useful optical signatures can be exploited to detect bio-aerosols with improved selectivity and reduced false alarm rates," according to a DARPA program document. "DARPA will conduct a rigorous evaluation of the potential to exploit these signatures with the goal of developing systems that rapidly detect biological agents," the document says.
Program officials have established a short timeline for the bio-aerosols research and development program. A bidders conference will be held March 5. "Source selection will be completed in April 2003, followed immediately by contracting," DARPA said.
The urgency in developing enhanced biological detection systems comes amid new indications of the growing threat of biological terrorism. The program gets underway as British authorities this week arrested six men of North African descent found with ricin, the deadly agent extracted from castor beans.
Andy Oppenheimer, a chemical and biological weapons experts for Jane's Information Group, told the Associated Press this week that terrorists could kill large numbers of people with ricin if it were successfully dispensed in aerosol form. "You only need milligrams to kill somebody," he said.