EM3 - Component Array Sensors for UXO Discrimination. One Year Study

The requirement for high-technology discrimination between metal fragments and intact munitions was spelled out by Dr William Delaney of the Defense Science Board, in a Keynote Paper Delaney, 2003. He noted the need for the screening of 2 million acres of current and former US military sites for the presence of UXOs, and estimated the cost of the current 1001 false-alarm rate FAR at 30 billion for digging holes on targets of which 99 are associated with scrap metal or artifacts. He called for discrimination tools capable of reducing the FAR. In answering this call, Flagstaff GeoConsultants initially submitted its proposal for BEAMOD B-field Electromagnetic Array for Munitions and Ordnance Detection based over three years for the development of a prototype sensor system for UXO discrimination. The project s target expectation, coupled with the development of discrimination algorithms, is the possible reduction in FAR rates by 80, implying potential savings in digging holes in the order of 24 billion. SERDP approved the first year of the BEAMOD development and Project UX- 1445 was commissioned to investigate how hardware and software innovations in time-domain electromagnetic induction EMI instrumentation, developed within the mineral exploration industry, might be applied to UXO detection in such a way as to enhance detection and discrimination capabilities on buried munitions and scrap metal. The one year project characterizes and investigates the use of two vector magnetic field sensors one fluxgate magnetometer and one SQUID magnetometer and develops complementary processing and modeling algorithms in order to enhance measurement and interpretation capabilities of EMI systems in UXO applications.