As part of the us Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Programme, the Air Force Research Laboratory calls for a proposal on the ‘Aerial Distribution of Taggants‘.
OBJECTIVE: Develop and demonstrate innovative methods to unobtrusively distribute taggants onto moving targets for tracking, locating, and identification purposes.
DESCRIPTION: Taggants are very small devices that emit an electro-magnetic signal. They can be applied to targets of interest and used to track/locate them in tactical situations. These targets of interest could be vehicles or personnel, which could be moving or stationary. To effectively “tag” the target, the taggant must be administered “unobtrusively,” meaning that the target should not be cognizant that taggants have been applied to them. Obviously, this application is more easily accomplished by some sort of ground agent, but it is desirous to be able to distribute taggants aerially via a small remotely piloted aircraft (SRPA). This is not as an easy task when factoring unobtrusiveness. The easiest, but obtrusive, means of delivery would be for the SRPA to “divebomb” the target or “shoot a paintball” at the target. The target would obviously notice a swooping SRPA and likely feel the sting of the well-placed pellet.
The key to “unobtrusiveness” for aerial application is the ability to deliver a “cloud” of taggants on the target’s location or directly in its path. In order to do this the taggants must be dust-like and have the ability to attach to the target. One method of distribution would be “crop-dusting” from a sufficiently high altitude (to avoid detection) and letting the dust-cloud fall on the target or in front of it if it is moving. This method would likely utilize a large amount of taggant to assure probability of successful tagging, although it might be useful when tagging a group of targets.
The next method would be to deliver a small munition close by and pneumatically blow a cloud of taggants on or in front of the target. The munition could potentially air burst above the application zone or emplace itself near the application zone and be proximity or command-detonated. These methods are given as examples; other innovative methods are also sought.
PHASE I: Design a feasible concept mechanism for unobtrusive aerial taggant distribution as described above. The feasibility of the concept capability must be validated by means of analysis and/or simulation.
PHASE II: Refine the Phase I results to develop the mechanism into a feasible configuration/prototype that can be employed by a SRPA. This phase must demonstrate the prototype’s capability to distribute taggants.
PHASE III DUAL USE COMMERCIALIZATION:
Military Application: Counter-insurgency and global war on terror (GWOT), marking civilians to prevent collateral damage, marking coalition forces without Blue Force Tracker.
Commercial Application: Law enforcement and Homeland Security, wildlife tracking, remote or toxic chemical spill mapping.
Effectively tracking foes has become a high priority — and deeply secret — research effort for the Pentagon, which has struggled at times to sort out insurgent from innocent in places like Afghanistan. The Navy has a $450 million contract with Herndon, Virginia’s Blackbird Technologies, Inc. to produce tiny beacons to make terrorists traceable. The Defense Department has been pouring serious cash — $210 million that they’ll admit to — to find advanced new ways to do this so-called “Tagging, Tracking and Locating” work, as Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger noted in Popular Science last year. The research she cataloged is as mind-boggling as it is varied. Ideas range from uniquely-identifiable insect pheromones to infrared gear that tracks people with their “thermal fingerprint.” One company, Voxtel, makes tiny nano-crystals that can be hidden in clear liquids and seen through night vision goggles.
A 2007 briefing from U.S. Special Operations Command on targeting technology stated that SOCOM was looking for “perfumes” and “stains” that would mark out bad guys from a distance. The presentation listed a “bioreactive taggant” as a “current capability” next to a picture of what looks like a painted or bruised arm.
Another tracking technology is “smart dust” — a long-forecast cloud of tiny sensors that stick to target human or his clothes. And that seems to be what the Air Force is looking for.
Source: Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research Ressource Center, Wired Danger Room