By Calvin Biesecker
Raytheon [RTN] has received a $4.7 million contract to transition into the development phase of a program being sponsored by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) to find ways to detect radiological threat materials at stand-off ranges.
The award follows a successful Phase I effort in which Raytheon went through a preliminary design review of its proposed solution for the Stand-Off Radiation Detection System (SORDS), John McElroy, the head of homeland security advanced technology efforts at Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems division, told Defense Daily yesterday. In the second phase Raytheon will “dive deeper” into the design and do modeling and simulation to examine the various tradeoffs that will have to be made in constructing a prototype, which would be the focus of Phase III if the company is awarded another contract, he said.
The SORDS technology that Raytheon is working on involves multiple modes of detector technology and sophisticated software algorithms that analyze the collected data and provide detection of harmful radiation with a degree of identification, McElroy said. The system would be vehicle mounted–such as a sport utility vehicle (SUV) or pick-up truck– so that it is portable and relocatable, he said. The system would detect at distances while moving, he added. The radiation detection technology is passive.
The continued work for Raytheon under SORDS demonstrates the success the company has had in this area with the Department of Homeland Security since winning a spot two years ago on another program focused on next-generation radiation detection.
Raytheon has already developed vehicle-based passive radiation detection systems for DNDO under the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) program. While ASP has been primarily focused on developing next-generation radiation portal monitors that do a better job discriminating between potentially harmful sources of radiation and normally occurring radiation found in cargo loads, the project has also focused on other basing concepts, namely installing it on SUVs (Defense Daily, Feb. 8).
The main difference between ASP and SORDS is the stand-off capability DNDO is hoping to achieve through SORDS.
McElroy described Phase II as the critical design review part of the program. In addition to modeling and simulating the design, Raytheon would also begin long-lead purchases of detector materials in anticipation of being promoted to the next phase.
Raytheon received a $2.9 million Phase I contract last November. A fourth phase of the program would involve test and evaluation of the prototype. Raytheon said that a total of $9.9 million is available for all four phases.
While SORDS is focused on developing and validating ground-based technology for stand-off detection, McElroy said theoretically the technology may work on an aircraft based platform as well.
General Electric [GE], the Naval Research Laboratory, and SAIC [SAI] each also received Phase I awards under SORDS. Whether these entities have also received Phase II awards is unclear yet.
Ultimately, Raytheon hopes that SORDS evolves into a production program but that has yet to be determined, McElroy said.
The members of Raytheon’s SORDS team include Los Alamos National Laboratory, Bubble Technology Industries, Radiation Monitoring Devices, Draper Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Univ. of Michigan. McElroy said these teammates are also collaborating with Raytheon on other radiation detection efforts that he couldn’t disclose.