Sensor Research Plays Into IED Detection in Afghanistan

The 2019 Larry D. Welch Award winner for best external publication was a paper published in the proceedings of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics technology by IDA researchers Erik M. Rosen, Phillip T. Koehn, and Marie E. Talbott. This summary discussed their Welch Award–winning paper, “Standardized Down-Looking Ground-Penetrating Radar (DLGPR) Data Collections,” which focused on DLGPR and how it supports location of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in different types of soil. The IED detection system the authors tested for their paper was successfully used by the Army in Afghanistan. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, IDA’s sensor, surveillance, and target acquisition research has evolved to use of infrared sensors to detect tanks and armored vehicles.