The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) shortly plans to start a long awaited competition to purchase explosive detection systems (EDS) used to screen checked baggage at the nation’s airports, with contract awards expected in December, agency officials say.
TSA expects to begin soliciting proposals this month for three categories of EDS and plans to conduct a lot of testing prior to the contract awards, Jenel Kline, program manager, Electronic Baggage Screening Program, Office of Security Technology at TSA, said at last month’s Aviation Security Summit hosted by the American Association of Airport Executives. The EDS categories are high-speed, medium-speed and reduced size.
A draft Request for Proposals for the open procurement was released in October. EDS are computed tomography (CT)-based X-Ray systems that can automatically detect explosives in checked baggage. TSA currently buys the systems from three companies: Morpho Detection, which is part of France’s SAFRAN Group, L-3 Communications [LLL] and Reveal Imaging Technologies.
L-3 has systems certified in all three EDS categories while Morpho Detection offers medium-speed systems and Reveal reduced size. Morpho Detection has introduced a high speed system that is being evaluated by the Department of Homeland Security. Reveal has received several contracts this year from TSA for its systems using Recovery Act funding. Last fall TSA awarded L-3 $38.3 million and Morpho Detection $34.3 million for EDS systems. The first stage of the Morpho order calls for delivery of 12 CTX 9800 DSi and six CTX 9400 DSi EDS.
The upcoming competition is expected to feature additional competition, in particular for high-speed systems, as well as new requirements that are aimed at improving threat detection, standardization across the various companies’ systems and better accounting for life-cycle costs.
The additional competition, if it comes this year, will be from companies that are developing new types of CT-based EDS that have stationary gantries as opposed to the rating gantries currently used to acquire the three dimensional images that make the systems so valuable in automatically detecting threats. L-3, OSI Systems‘ [OSIS] Rapiscan division, and SureScan all have TSA contracts to develop stationary gantry EDS. Rapiscan’s head of Global Government Affairs Peter Kant says his company’s system will be ready for the competition.
The latest version of TSA’s Planning Guidelines and Design Standards for Checked Baggage Inspection Systems, released in late November, said that the SureScan stationary gantry system is in the certification process and that the L-3 and Rapiscan systems are still in development.
Rapiscan has said its Real Time Tomography system will be able to screen at least 1,500 bags per hour and require lower operating and maintenance costs than today’s EDS systems in operation. TSA’s threshold for high-speed systems is above 900 bags per hour.
Kline says that TSA would like to eventually acquire stationary gantry EDS both for expected lower operating costs and because the systems are lighter weight, which means lower installation costs. Flooring at airports typically has to be reinforced to handle the weight of the EDS systems. TSA also likes that the stationary gantry systems have the potential for higher throughput.
Options for Stationary Gantry Systems
The recent planning guidance for checked baggage inspection systems says that TSA is considering two options when it comes to stationary gantry EDS. One is a high-volume baggage inspection system that would meet the agency’s Tier 1 detection requirements. In this approach the stationary gantry EDS would conduct the first level of screening. If the system alarms in Level 1, a security officer would attempt to clear the alarm using on-screen resolution. This is called Level 2. If this fails, the suspect bag would go for Level 3 screening using explosive trace detection.
The other option is a system that would also meet Tier 1 detection requirements but also has false alarm rates equal or less than two times the Tier 1 requirement. The second approach would used a stationary gantry system and a medium-volume EDS, which are currently either L-3 or Morpho Detection machines, where the medium-volume EDS is used in Level 2 to screen all bags that automatically alarm in the stationary gantry machine.
Among the new requirements for EDS are standardizing the systems so that the interfaces between them are common with airport baggage handling systems of inline deployments, Kline says. The agency also wants more standard display protocols for screeners and plans to add requirements to be able to automatically detect more threats.
If TSA is able to stick to its planned schedule for the open EDS procurement and award contracts next December, it would be about 15 months since GE and L-3 last received awards for those systems. Those companies do have concerns about keeping their EDS production lines relatively stable until then, assuming they get any of the new awards. However, industry officials say that TSA hasn’t been clear about when it will want deliveries to being, which makes production planning difficult for these firms.
The “industrial base is important to us,” Robin Kane, TSA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Security Technology, says at the conference. The agency is mindful of the need to manage the industrial base and does this by keeping industry informed and getting contracts in place, he adds.
Keeping in line with the way TSA has been purchasing equipment, the agency plans to establish a Qualified Products List for the EDS systems in the new procurement and award contracts only to companies on that list.
Smiths Detection, Analogic in Partnership
At least one company in the EDS fold is hedging its bets. Last month Analogic [ALOG], the long-time supplier of the core technology used in L-3’s EDS systems, agreed to a partnership with Britain’s Smiths Detection on the development of next-generation high-speed EDS. The deal with Smiths enables Analogic to Analogic to expand its sales channels.
Terms of the partnership call for a two-year development of a hybrid machine that combines elements of CT with Advanced Technology (AT) X-Ray. Smiths supplies AT X-Ray systems to the TSA for checkpoint screening of carry-on bags and other customers worldwide for hold baggage screening. Smiths is in charge of overall design, a company spokesman tells TR2.
Once the hybrid machine is developed, Analogic will supply CT components to Smiths for five years. Smiths is paying for the development, the spokesman says. If the venture is successful, the hybrid CT/AT machine could open a new product lane for Smiths, which doesn’t currently offer CT-based EDS solutions, he adds.
The potential of a hybrid machine is the high baggage throughput of AT machines used in Europe with the threat detection precision of CT-based EDS. The machine will also have a large tunnel aperture, 100 cm by 80 cm, the Smiths spokesman says.