Proliferation Detection in the Maritime Environment using Spectral Analysis

The Remote Detection Program within the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development develops new technical capabilities to improve the detection, identification, and quantification of special nuclear and radiological materials to detect new nuclear threats and assure nuclear test treaty compliance. With the advent of nuclear-powered maritime vessels comes an increased chance of nuclear materials and technology proliferation, requiring advances in remote sensing characterization in maritime environments for global coverage. Hyperspectral Imaging is a modality that generally enables remote characterization of a material by measuring radiance as a function of wavelength, which has a distinct profile for every chemical. Algorithms to separate the target source from the background and atmosphere allow users to deduce the chemical makeup of materials and their quantities to remotely detect and characterize activities. The complex phenomenology of lightĺs interaction with water makes analyzing hyperspectral data over the maritime environment challenging and renders many standard atmospheric compensation techniques unusable. This Fast Track Phase I and Phase II proposal focuses on the development and commercialization of hyperspectral processing techniques in maritime environments, including atmospheric compensation, and solid/liquid film target detection and characterization. These capabilities will enable better intelligence extraction from an otherwise underutilized resource for maritime intelligence. Phase I aims to develop products for immediate use including atmospherically compensated water reflectance data. Phase I data source platforms will include primarily airborne systems, with the objective of expanding techniques to both drone-based systems and the new generation of high spatial/spectral resolution space-based systems. This product will be available to data providers for sale to customers or further processing depending on the mission. Phase II will improve the quality of the atmospheric and water parameter estimation, enabling better performance over a wider variety of conditions. Phase II will also focus on detection and characterization products, such as bottom composition determination, depth determination, and target detection. During Phase I, multiple data providers, who have provided letters of support, will be able to access demonstrations of the proposed analysis on their data. This will help inform future products for their current and potential user base. This feedback will help drive objects of the program, ensuring successful technology transition to the commercial data analysis community. During Phase II, the demonstrations on commercially available satellite providers will help position the developed products for the commercial satellite market, growing the audience and applications providers can aid users with. During the lifecycle of this program, other stakeholders outside of the nuclear nonproliferation community will be included in discussions on capabilities and future mission spaces. The developed technology is aimed to be transitioned to commercial companies, the nuclear nonproliferation community, and additional government missions. Additional government missions include maritime intelligence, disaster response, environmental protection, fisheries monitoring, ecosystem health assessment, and exploration by the oil/gas/mining industry.