By Ann Roosevelt
Raytheon’s [RTN] Counter-IED Task Force, which crosses the breadth of the company, continues to find ideas and technologies to help solve the IED problem, and along the way is discovering some game changing technologies, according to a company official.
“As of May we had about 200 ideas coming in to solve the problem–some don’t pan out, some morph into other things,” said Jack Costello, vice president of Business Development and Strategic Planning for Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems (NCS). “I will tell you that I think we have found three disruptive technologies. Now, whether we’re able to operationalize those technologies, I don’t know. But I think we can.”
It is not possible to discuss specific task force efforts, but it’s clear the IED challenge remains.
“From our point of view, the IED challenge for our soldiers is not going away whether be in Iraq or Afghanistan or frankly anywhere else in the world,” he said. “We believe the intelligence reports published in the public domain that an IED attack in the United States is not out of the question.”
Thus, beyond the Defense Department, the task force also has had discussions and worked with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in its counter-IED efforts.
“Our task force across Raytheon has been in existence for two years in December,” Costello said. “We’ve invested a not insignificant amount of money both at the business level and at the corporation level in terms of trying to come up with solutions.”
The task force has focused in areas such as persistent surveillance.
In other words, how to provide the right sensing with the right embedded algorithms to provide some persistent surveillance and cueing capability for operators in theater so they can determine changes in geography or monitor unusual activity. Put together with what the military calls intelligence preparation of the battlefield, operators can try and determine IED threats before they happen.
Since persistent surveillance platforms come in all shapes, sizes and varieties to include manned and unmanned, the challenge is to assist the user and the operator getting information down to a manageable, actionable type of activity, he said. “We’re working very hard on that.”
Another focus is on the specific aspects of IED attack that require very sophisticated sensors to detect various means of attack. “We are working with the laboratories across the country. We’re working with colleges and universities, and of course with (Joint IED Defeat Organization) JIEDDO in terms of how do you detect these varieties of trigger devices for both electronic and physical for IEDs. I think we’re making some progress there and it is a tough challenge.”
Raytheon also conducts IED training with the Army as part of a contract at the National Training Center and is working to ensure home station and theater training is as sophisticated and realistic as possible.
“We’re working a lot with technologies in terms of facial recognition, stand-off explosive detection and other technologies that can identify a potential bomber or a potential IED attack,” he said.
Another area of focus is on traumatic brain injury (TBI). About eight months ago, the task force thought it had found a potential solution. “This first TBI idea looked good. Then as we drilled it down from a science and technology standpoint, from an operational standpoint, it probably wasn’t the right way to go.”
That technology was discovered via Raytheon’s CounterIED Task Force web site that asks small business, industry or people for ideas (Defense Daily, Oct. 29).
Now, Raytheon continues to have an active program to try and counter TBI, in part because of its continued relationships with JIEDDO, Walter Reed Army Medical Center and some colleges and universities around the country that continues to work the issue.
Additionally, Raytheon is one of the founding industry partners of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology at MIT, which has some ideas. They, too, have been working with Walter Reed.
“I’m probably going to invest a not insignificant amount to see if we can push [that] forward, and capitalize on the investment that’s already been done by the Army and by Walter Reed and the Institute for Soldier Nano-technology and see if we can run this to ground and come up with a potential solution.” Costello said. “I think we’re going to make progress here. It’s got our attention. It’s not in our core capabilities. The reason we’re doing it is we want to do anything we can to apply whatever we know as part of a larger team to see if we can solve the problem.”
Some of the ideas submitted to the task force don’t work out. Some morph into other relationships. For example, in California, ground-penetrating radar tests that JIEDDO facilitated Raytheon working with another company. So far, so good, he said. This came about as a result of all the task force outreach to small business and innovative thinkers.
Other ideas have moved elsewhere in Raytheon, though that was not part of the initial motivation for the task force, he said. For example, modeling and simulation capability in algorithms that complements some of the detailed work Raytheon has been doing for many years.
“From my personal standpoint our relationships to the (Federally Funded Research and Development Centers) FFRDCs and some of the laboratories has grown much closer,” Costello said. “Obviously IED and counterIED is a priority but just building those relationships and having them move to other areas is mutually beneficial…The fact of the matter is we, our perspective as a company, has broadened in a number of areas as we meet others with other ideas.”
Raytheon also has done a number of things for various parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the general umbrella of homeland security. “We received a number of contracts from DHS specifically to help on things that could be described as ‘left of the boom’ on a number of projects. This is sort of an expansion of what we were doing earlier, a little more focused and we still continue to offer solutions for the general homeland security challenge.
Raytheon also conducts the E-Borders program for the United Kingdom. “We’re getting a lot of data and learning lot of lessons for them and we’re discussing now how do you take the ongoing programs that you have and regardless of the customers and you take it up a notch in terms of how you prevent an IED attack. The challenges are significantly different, since you can’t take a platoon of infantry into New York City, and you can’t drive down Broadway with an IED jammer as easily as you can in some other parts of the world, and the challenges are a bit different,” he said.
“However, our initial challenge still remains how do you provide a solution for the troops in contact right now,” Costello said. “I will tell you that we developed reference architectures for IED defeat and also developed a concept of operations, different vignettes for IED defeat, did both and gave to JIEDDO.”