New radio-wave sensors are designed to suss out hidden explosives —whether in car bombs or carry-on laptops
By Caroline Houck; Defense One:
Detecting roadside bombs and other IEDs has been a major — and deadly — challenge for the U.S. military since it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan at the start of the century. And for the majority of that time, Raytheon has been working to develop a sensor that could identify those explosive materials shielded in a car, packed into a case, or hidden on a person.
The result of that decade of work: a new radio-frequency sensor that identifies explosives by their chemical composition.
The system is called REDS, or Raytheon’s Explosive Detection System, and it’s scalable — from a handheld sensor the size of a laptop to a full-size checkpoint that can scan pedestrians and vehicles as they pass. It’s still experimental; Raytheon has a contract to demo it with the Joint Improvised-threat Defeat Organization, or JIDO, the latest iteration of the military’s anti-IEDskunk works.
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