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| Activity title | Development of Standardized Targets for Military Search | Activity Reference | SET-321 | Panel | SET | Security Classification | Other | Status | Active | Activity type | RTG | Start date | 2023-04-25T00:00:00Z | End date | 2026-04-25T00:00:00Z | Keywords | canonical target, CIED, command wire detector, detection, electronics detector, GPR, Military Search, SET, standardized target | Background | Military Search (MS) — which includes the detection aspects of countering explosive hazards (EH) such as landmines, unexploded ordnance (UXO), explosive remnants of war (ERW), or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — is defined as the management and application of systematic procedures and appropriate tools to detect and locate specific targets, in support of a military operation.
NATO has defined several levels of MS. The lowest level is Basic Search for overall force protection as a basic skill for trained soldiers. Intermediate MS is for situations with no or a low threat of explosive hazards, or when a lower level of assurance is accepted. The highest level, Advanced MS, is meant for situations with a high threat, when only the highest level of assurance is accepted, or when a hazardous environment exists.
Although MS is often regarded as a procedure to find weapons and explosive hazards, such as landmines, unexploded ordnance (UXO), explosive remnants of war (ERW), or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and explosive material precursors (materials that can be used of manufacturing IEDs), Advanced MS is more and more applied to locate other, non-explosive targets in both military and civil (police, customs, tax authorities) operations. Examples are non-explosive components that are used in IEDs (e.g. electronic remote control units), electronic information carriers (SD-card, USB stick), valuables used by the adversary to finance its operations (money, jewels, drugs), documents (that may contain information of the adversary’s network), etc. To support these high assurance or high risk search tasks, Advanced MS is conducted by specialists with special tool set.
With a broadened search target set and the employment of new more advanced MS technologies comes the added requirement to defined and assess their technical performance in the context of MS.
The NATO Team of Experts on Technologies for Military Search (TOE TMS), established under the NATO Military Engineering Working Group (MILENG WG), is a joint military/civilian forum bringing together experienced military, procurement, and S&T subject matter experts in order to identify and study the S&T challenges that are limiting the rapid adoption and exploitation of advanced technologies by the military search community.
Recent discussions on the future tasks for the TOE TMS, identified the development of standardized targets as a high priority for the military search community. The definition and acceptance of standardized search targets forms the foundation for effective allied collaboration and burden sharing regarding the development, evaluation, and interoperability of advanced military search technologies. While such targets exist for well-known search technologies, such as the ubiquitous metal detector, or exist in some sense as community agreed upon target sets such as for Ground Penetrating Radar, they do not yet exist for newer and more complicated technologies such as for electronics detection, one example being non-linear junction detection, or NLJD.
The NATO TOE TMS has suggested splitting their task into two parts: the joint military/scientific TOE TMS taking on the task of defining standardized military search technical performance requirements; and, a new, coordinated NATO STO RTG to take on the scientific task of designing and developing standardized targets.
This TAP is to pursue a three (3) year Research Task Group (RTG) for the development of standardized military search targets to aid in the development, evaluation, and interoperability of advanced military search technologies. | Objectives | Broadly there are two general classes of test targets to consider:
a. Canonical targets. Targets designed from physical principles so that their responses can be analytically predicted or modelled, and verified. Often very simple in construction, emphasizing physical principles and the predicted response over realism. Canonical targets simplify technical performance analysis and comparisons by reducing uncontrolled variables, but translating observations to operational performance is more tenuous. Examples, a metal sphere, a diode, a homogeneous wax cylinder.
b. Representative, or Community of Interest, targets. Real world targets that are often too complicated for modelling or analytic analysis, but represent a real world threat and are agreed-upon by all. While representative targets seem to be more applicable to the prediction of operational performance, they tend to be singular instances of a class of targets so inferences of general threat class performance should be made cautiously; detection of one cell phone at 10 m does not mean detection of all cell phones at 10 m. Examples, a free-from-explosive landmine, or a specific model of cell phone.
While this taxonomy may be a too coarse – a target may be both canonical and representative (the perfect target), or neither (standard clutter), or a mix – it is safe to say that accepted canonical targets are limited to a few technologies, such as metal detection (MD), and these were accepted only after significant international effort
| Topics | a. Definitions of a canonical, surrogate, and representative targets sufficient to cover the intent of the task;
b. Review of the physical operating principles of military search technologies, as it pertains to the design of technology-specific canonical targets;
c. Scientific methods for canonical target design;
d. Scientific skill sets and facilities required for the development of technology-specific canonical targets; and,
e. Key performance indicators and related test procedures for technology-specific canonical targets. | | Contact Panel Office |
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