Rapid Detection of Land Mines and Unexploded Ordnance

The world is already littered with 100 million mines in more than 60 countries, and mines are still being laid at the rate of 2.5 million per year. Mines contributed a significant percentage of total troop and equipment losses in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam; and mines and other exploded ordnance (UXO) continue killing civilians long after the conflicts themselves have ended. The lack of effective detector is a major reason for all these losses. Detectors based on physical properties associated with UXO have been unsuccessful. Biopraxis offers an entirely new technology, which is not being developed anywhere else in the world, for direct chemically-specific detection of the explosives themselves. This technology offers the potential for producing a small, rugged, reliable, sensitive, inexpensive explosives detector. Biopraxis has already collected an extensive body of data which indicates that the concept is indeed feasible. During Phase I, additional studies will be conducted to demonstrate the technology with explosives found in mines, evaluate potential interferents, and develop data that can be used to predict the performance of ranging from to vehicular-mounted detectors. By the end of the Phase I, several key components for the mine detector will have been selected.