Britain’s QinetiQ has launched OptaSense, a buried cable fiber optic sensor solution that detects multiple, simultaneous disturbances every 10 meters over a 40 kilometer length of installed cable. QinetiQ says the product has applications for border, pipeline and cable security. “It is equally applicable to detecting intruders in perimeter security applications as it is to monitoring mechanical failure in critical underwater infrastructure,” says Mike O’Connor, managing director if QinetiQ Ventures. OptaSense has demonstrated an ability to accurately detect and locate events under a wide array of test conditions, including a person walking and running, manual digging, vehicle approach, tracked vehicle, and a mini-digger digging, QinetiQ says. Events are displayed on the user interface and an operator can listen in to each location. The classification of acoustic signatures can be optimized to suit the customer’s particular application, QinetiQ tells TR2. OptaSense has been used by AT&T Corp. [T] for a Naval Undersea Warfare Command demonstration. Sensoptics provides the design for the sensing element and QinetiQ has developed the signature classification algorithms. QinetiQ says that the system has been designed so that data is easily exportable, in real-time, to any command and control system.