Northrop lands mine deal

The Naval Surface Warfare Center-Dahlgren Division has awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman Corp. for a system that will help detect enemy land mines.

The $44.7 million award for the Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis (COBRA) system is the culmination of seven years of research into how the system could detect the mines, said Ken Davis, COBRA system engineer.

The system, which could be deployed within five years, will enable soldiers to conduct operations without being concerned about land mines, he said. The system will give a commander additional flexibility to carry out missions with less risk to personnel.

COBRA will use a multispectral or a hyper.spectral imaging sensor system deployed in an unmanned aerial drone that will fly over an area. That sensor is designed to filter certain parts of the spectrum, similar to the way a filter on a camera lens works, thereby highlighting mines, Davis said. That data would be transmitted to a system that would overlay the sites of any potential mines onto maps, enabling an operator to determine whether the objects could be mines.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center's Coastal Systems Station in Panama City, Fla., has been conducting an Advanced Technology Demonstration project since 1994 to determine if the sensors could highlight mines, he said. The contract award is a significant step in moving the proj.ect toward deployment.

The most difficult task was creating a process to distinguish the mines from rocks and other such items, Davis said. The system also has to be able to work in various environments, such as on a beach or in grassy areas.