Detecting Threat Liquids Within Sealed Tanks

Every day, hundreds of thousands of personal and commercial vehicles enter the 120+ Department of the Air Force (DAF) installations worldwide. Any one of these vehicles could be smuggling explosives, drugs, or contraband in fuel tanks and Air Force force protection / anti-terrorism teams have limited means to screen for these threats. Drug smugglers are exploiting the known limitations of US border and entry control point (ECP) inspection by hiding drugs and other contraband in vehicle fuel tanks. This smuggling pathway could be used to bring a threatening fluid like a chemical/biological weapon, drugs, or an accelerant onto a base and be used to kill Airmen or destroy aircraft in a terrorist attack. There is currently no fast or cost effective way to screen the contents of a sealed tank. Defenders use mirrors to manually screen the undercarriage of vehicles entering base and in some cases X-ray or Military Working Dogs (MWD) to further screen vehicles and their cargo entering base or onto a flightline. None of these approaches can directly identify materials concealed within a tank and more importantly, they take time - limiting the throughput and effectiveness of ECPs.   Battelle and Spectrohm’s sealed tank screening technology—to be further developed in this proposal—would enhance force protection and anti-terrorism efforts at vehicle checkpoints by reducing the time needed to inspect vehicles and improving detection of smuggled threat materials in vehicle fuel tanks. Unlike X-rays which see through materials, or a dog’s nose which can smell the unique signature of materials, Battelle and Spectrohm’s technology uses a combination of both radio frequencies (RF) and ultrasound to both see through a sealed tank while measuring the signatures of materials therein. Thus Spectrohm and Battelle’s system accomplishes both the seeing and identifying functions with a single tool using lower cost and safer technologies. In this effort, Spectrohm and Battelle would develop a man-portable solution which Defenders could simply touch against a vehicle tank to quickly (within 5 seconds) reveal its contents. These handheld “tank tongs” could be used on vehicle fuel tanks, trade gas tanks, or even tanker vehicles to verify their contents before proceeding onto base or a flightline. The mission impact of this project on the DAF and DoD will be to improve vehicle tank inspection speed and accuracy for security forces, by developing an inspection tool that enables Defenders to quickly and safely screen fuel tanks for threat substances, ultimately improving base safety. This will ultimately introduce a faster and more secure way to protect Air Force bases around the globe so that aircraft, strategic assets, and Airmen are kept safe.