SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS & RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: Roadside IED's are expected to be a significant tool in our enemy"s arsenal for

Description

Roadside IED's are expected to be a significant tool in our enemy"s arsenal for years to come. They are the tool of choice since they are cheap, low cost and require very little skill to develop and deploy. Thus, there is a compelling unmet need for a directed energy device that can reliably and rapidly neutralize buried IEDs over large areas. The existing IED defeat systems are based on HPM or lasers and they operate by concentrating power into a narrow coherent beam aimed at a potential buried target. Such directed energy systems are promising if one"s mission is neutralization of a known device. But in the case of IEDs, there's a serious weakness in this approach! The very nature of the IED threat is that its location is unknown. SARA"s approach counters this weakness by offering an effective wide area long range IED-defeating solution. SARA"s concept is based on launching low frequency high energy two-dimensional surface waves, also known as Zenneck waves. The approach offers the compelling advantages of lower propagation losses, wide area coverage, through the ground penetration, and penetration through conductive shielding countermeasures.