By Calvin Biesecker
The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) plans to award a contract to OSI Systems‘ [OSIS] Rapiscan division to field test an upgraded version of the company’s Eagle Portal cargo and vehicle inspection system to see how well it performs in detecting special nuclear materials and other materials that could be used to shield threat materials.
DNDO announced its contract plans in a FedBizOpps notice last Thursday. The six-month field test will take place at a United States port.
The test project is part of a revised program originally aimed at developing new technologies to more accurately detect the presence of nuclear threat materials, and even the materials that would be used to shield the nuclear materials, inside of cargo containers and vehicles. DNDO revised the Cargo Advanced Automated Radiography System (CAARS) when it realized that the technologies under development weren’t mature enough to enter the procurement phase of the program (Defense Daily, July 3).
While the development effort remains in place with the three CAARS contractors–American Science and Engineering [ASEI], L-3 Communications [LLL] and SAIC [SAI]–DNDO and its end customer Customs and Border Protection (CBP), decided to investigate existing Non- Intrusive Inspection (NII) systems to see how well they fare against the demanding requirements of CAARS. These current NII systems may not fully meet the mandates of CAARS, but the goal now is to meet at least a portion of those requirements.
The field tests with the Eagle Portal will likely begin this fall. “We’re ready to go now,” Peter Kant, vice president of Government Affairs at Rapiscan, told Defense Daily last Friday.
DNDO awarded the CAARS contracts in 2006. Possibly to hedge its bets, the agency also awarded Rapiscan a development contract that year for the company to upgrade its Eagle Portal for the anti-nuclear mission. That award was followed up with a second in early 2007 to prototype the technology and a third award earlier this year for data fusion to improve the performance of existing nuclear detection techniques.
“The system is developed,” Kant said of the company’s upgraded Eagle Portal. The upgraded version of the Eagle Portal can do the nuclear detection mission and simultaneously continue to screen for typical contraband such as drugs, weapons and illegal aliens without degrading throughput, he said. Moreover, the upgrade can be installed on existing Eagle Portals, he added.
If the field test demonstrates that the upgraded Eagle Portal can do what DNDO and CBP hope it can, then Kant believes there will be production opportunities for the new system.
In addition to Rapiscan, three other companies currently have indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity production contracts with CBP for cargo inspection systems. Those firms are SAIC, Varian Medical Systems [VAR] through its acquisition last year of Bio-Imaging Research, and Britain’s Smiths Detection.
The Joint Integrated NII program, of which CAARS is a part of, will manage forthcoming field tests with the Eagle Portal and any other technologies DNDO and CBP want to take a look at for the nuclear screening mission. The program is separate from the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal, which is a DNDO effort to develop next-generation passive screening systems to determine whether cargo conveyances are carrying illicit radiological materials.