JSTOin the News

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May 2016 | Vol. 6 No. 5

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited

Big Data to Forecast Threats

Laser Research Leads to Better Protection

Skin in the Game

On the front cover: U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Joel Melendez, Naval Network Warfare Command, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Rogerick Montgomery, U.S. Cyber Command, and U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jacob Harding, 780th Military Intelligence Brigade, analyze an exercise scenario during Cyber Flag 13-1, Nov. 8, 2012, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Cyber Flag strategically focuses on exercising the command’s mission of operating and defending the Department of Defense networks across the full spectrum of operations against a realistic adversary in a virtual environment. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Matthew Lancaster)

On the back cover:Paratroopers from the 1st Battalion (Airborne) 143rd Infantry Regiment and Charlie Troop (LRS) 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment conduct airborne operations at Fort Hood’s Rapido Drop Zone on April 17, 2015. The 314th Airlift Wing from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., provided the C-130 aircraft for the 36th Infantry Division Soldiers of the Texas Army National Guard. (U.S. Army photo by Maj. Randall Stillinger)

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Lead DoD science and

technology to anticipate,

defend and safeguard

against chemical and

biological threats for the

warfighter and the nation.

DEFENSE THREAT REDUCTION AGENCY & USSTRATCOM Center for Combating WMD & Standing Joint Force Headquarters-Elimination

J9 Research and Development Directorate Chemical and Biological Technologies

8725 John J Kingman Road, Stop 6201, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060

www.dtra.mil

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Handle: @cbdstconference

Keyword: DTRA

Channel: doddtra

SME @ email addressPOC: Michael Roberts; michael.a.roberts212.civ@mail.mil

Much like the skin is the body’s first line of protection, a warfighter’s uniform acts in a similar way against chemical and biological threats. However, the research, development and production of uniforms to equip more than two million troops does not come at a small cost. To address this issue, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Joint Science and Technology Office, in collaboration with the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, is seeking a new technology to assess individual protection ensembles to improve warfighter safety more cost effectively, a tenet of DoD’s Better Buying Power 3.0 (BBP 3.0) initiative.

In 2004 the U.S. Army moved from its woodland and desert battle dress uniform to a digital pattern. A decade later, the Army is investing in another uniform to improve warfighter safety. Although these specific uniforms do not protect warfighters against chemical and biological threats, fabrication of such a uniform is underway, an expensive but important investment.

JSTO efforts will enhance the Individual Protection System Performance Model (IP SPM) software, reducing development costs of uniforms that protect the warfighter from chemical and biological threats. The new IP SPM V2.0 software allows researchers to model the garment’s performance including the toxicology risk and the thermal burden to a warfighter under a variety of operational conditions prior to fabrication.

Other benefits of the IP SPM V2.0 include extending the toxicological analysis for additional chemical and biological threats and non-traditional agents. The enhanced system also validates models by comparing them to enhanced test and evaluation data.

The IP SPM V2.0 software further supports BBP 3.0 by controlling lifecycle costs by reducing the need for impractical live agent testing against all prototpyes.

The IP SPM V2.0 allows researchers to use advanced physics-based modeling capabilities to model thermal effects, aerosol transport, joint expeditionary collective protection integration and advanced materials and closures, physiological effects and parametric sensitivity analysis.

One of the software’s most effective capabilities is that it can model where an agent will collect in a suit over the exposure time. This helps predict the toxicological effect of the agent on the warfighter. Also, since the suit models the thermal burden to the warfighter, it allows researchers to predict how a warfighter’s performance will change over time.

The IP SPM V2.0 project will continue to add new requirements to meet the new Uniform Integrated Protective Ensemble initial capabilities document. The collaborative JSTO/ECBC effort will continue to be instrumental in developing innovative personnel protective equipment for the warfighter to protect against chemical and biological threats for years to come.

INDIVIDUAL PROTECTION SYSTEM PERFORMANCE MODEL

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SME @ email address4

The third biannual meeting of the TW/HS CoP, co-led by Dr. Pate, included a keynote address by Dr. Patrick Carrick, Director of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency; remarks from Allison Curran of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a presentation

on international activities in technology and forecasting. Members of the TW/HS CoP will reach a consensus on metrics and standards, the decision landscape/taxonomy, and a plan for addressing data challenges in a manner coordinated across the national security community.

to Forecast Threats

In a world of uncertain futures, with annual budget cuts looming and warfighter safety at risk because of evolving threats, scientists at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Joint Science and Technology Office are learning how to do more with less. Dr. Brian Pate of DTRA is leveraging existing resources to increase data-driven approaches to technology and global threat forecasting.

Working with key stakeholders from across the national security community, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Pate serves an instrumental role in the Technology Watch and Horizon Scanning (TW/HS) Community of Practice (CoP). The CoP seeks a data-driven approach to technology and forecasting global threats.

This group, led by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Office of Technical Intelligence, will leverage resources from each agency to increase coordination to achieve improved outcomes with constrained resources. Given the central role of DTRA in countering weapons of mass destruction, it is important to recognize the agency’s role as well as current programmatic activities as they pertain to TW/HS.

BIG DATA

SME @ email address 5

In addition to the CoP, Dr. Pate advocates for key DTRA projects in the threat watch and scanning arena. Recently he presented at the annual “Science of Science” international workshop in Washington D.C., which draws data and library scientists from across the world. Dr. Pate emphasized DTRA’s focus on understanding and predicting events of low probability and high consequence, countering threats as far “upstream” as possible by leveraging commercial innovation, global partnerships and interagency efforts.

The DTRA Biosurveillance Ecosystem, a cloud-based design that fuses data tools and users in a social, self-sustaining web capability to enable earlier awareness of potential disease outbreaks, demonstrates their data-driven decision making toolset. Also, the new wearable exposure monitors program highlights DTRA’s data-driven approach to increase warfighter protection.

The effort will alert warfighters that they have been exposed to a threat and need to seek medical treatment well before disruptive, and potentially deadly, symptoms manifest. Dr. Pate is managing several additional efforts in data technology that are focused on algorithm development to provide early warning of exposure to chemical and biological weapons, leveraging physiological changes and molecular biomarkers which may be monitored in a minimally invasive manner.

Additional efforts to anticipate potential new WMD threats include DTRA’s technology forecasting pilot study and discovery methodologies assessment, led by the DTRA

Chief Scientist Office. These activities resulted in the binning of discovery methodologies into those that are either focused or undefined with respect to imposed technological constraints, and either expert-driven or data-driven with respect to the discovery methods.

DTRA is seeking novel methodologies and approaches (capable of operating in both unclassified and classified domains) that may be applied to the discovery and identification of emerging and disruptive technologies. This technology forecasting strategic initiative aims to integrate activities, align findings, share knowledge and foster discovery methodologies which are increasingly data-driven.

This strategic initiative looks across a broader range of potential technologies, with the goal of developing a DTRA capability to anticipate technology-driven emerging and disruptive threats.

Overall, DTRA’s activities foster an increasingly data-driven approach to technology and threat assessment forecasting. By employing an increasingly broad aperture, DoD leadership is better equipped to enable, increase, develop and sustain weapons of mass destruction countermeasure capabilities in a technologically dynamic and challenging environment.

By providing new capabilities and developing innovative emerging technologies, combined with overarching interagency efforts, DTRA and JSTO assess the threat landscape and protect the warfighter through affordable programs and data-driven forcasting.

POC: Dr. Brian Pate; brian.d.pate.civ@mail.mil

DTRA is investing in extensible technologies with purpose and focus. This graphic was provided by Dr. Brian Pate.

SME @ email address6

ADVANCEMENTS IN LASER RESEARCH Lead to Better Stand-off Detection

for the Warfighter and Nation

Conventional semiconductor lasers rely on recombination of electrons and holes across the fundamental band gap of the light emitting material to generate the wavelength of interest. The QCLs are based on only one type of carrier and inter-sub-band transitions across engineered energy levels using multiple quantum well heterostructures.

Simple quantum mechanics principles combined with material properties

can be readily used to design laser emission at desirable wavelengths using engineered sub-bands. This frees the designer from the need to find a naturally occurring material with the required fundamental energy band gap.

The QCLs wavelengths now are extending below 3 micrometers over the long-wavelength mid-infrared to the far-infrared, also known as terahertz regime. In spectroscopy,

lasers are used as optical sources for exciting molecular states for detection and identification.

The QCL is a compact solid state coherent source. The laser power generation however is not as high as desired for spectroscopy and it is accomplished at single wavelengths. Multiple wavelengths are needed since many molecules can show response for similar

Two-dimensional far-field intensity distribution (normalized) of the tapered QCL with plasmonic collimator, measured using a mid-infrared microbolometer array (160 x 120 pixels) with no optics placed directly in front of the laser facet. In (a) and (b), the pump current is, respectively, 1.5 Ith and 2.5 Ith, where Ith is the threshold current of the device. The angles are computed from the known pixel pitch (52 μm) and the distance between the facet and the sensor (14 mm). Images courtesy of Professor Federico Capasso and Dr. Patrick Rauter from Harvard University.

Harvard University principal investigator Professor Federico Capasso, one of the inventors of the quantum cascade lasers (QCLs), and Harvard researcher, Dr. Patrick Rauter, report recent progress in the development of multi-wavelength QCL arrays citing significant extensions in lengths. This recent Defense Threat Reduction Agency-funded research program highlighted impressive scientific accomplishments enabling high selectivity spectroscopy, which can be used for more accurate stand-off detection systems in defense of the nation.

SME @ email address 7 POC: Dr. Kiki Ikossi; kiki.ikossi.civ@mail.mil

wavelengths for a positive identification of molecules in mixtures and realistic environments.

Professor Capasso and Dr. Rauter report master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) QCL arrays as a more powerful alternative to distributed-feedback (DFB) devices. They achieve multi-watt power levels for tunable single-mode emission while preserving the spectral purity and high beam quality of narrow DFB lasers. A wide tuning range can be achieved by pulsing in sequence tens of QCL lasers on the same chip, each designed to emit a different wavelength. Professor Capasso and his research team improved the QCL power by 100 fold.

They designed a MOPA to boost the QCL-generated laser beam to powers as high as 10 W during peak power. The MOPA QCL arrays were integrated with quarter-wave-shifted DFB gratings

selecting a different frequency for each element of the QCL arrays on a single chip. The developed process allows for large scale integration on single semiconductor substrates.

In addition, the Harvard group used a novel flat plasmonic lens of their design directly fabricated on the laser facet to collimate the laser output into a diffraction-limited angle of only a few degrees, more than ten times smaller than the divergence of a typical semiconductor laser.

Professor Capasso’s team also demonstrated single-mode tapered QCL devices and arrays, hyperspectral imaging with arrays of single mode tapered QCL, widely tunable mid-infrared QCLs using sampled grating mirrors and mode switching in a multi-wavelength-DFB quantum cascade laser using an external micro-cavity.The demonstrated multi-wavelength

QCLs have high peak powers of up to 10 W, superior beam quality, electrical means of wavelength tuning independently of mechanical components and compact dimensions. Consequently the MOPA QCL arrays are highly suited as a robust, powerful and tunable mid-infrared source for spectroscopy and stand-off detection systems.

Spectroscopy and detection systems based on multi-wavelength QCL arrays as tunable mid-infrared sources have tremendous potential to outperform conventional systems in a variety of fields and to open up new applications calling for fast, compact and mechanically robust solutions for civilian and defense use.

To learn more about this important research, refer to “Multi-wavelength Quantum Cascade Laser Arrays,” in Laser & Photonics Reviews.

DFB master oscillator single pass power amplifier

output facet withanti-reflection coating

... 9.2µm 9.5µm 9.8µm

Top view and intensity distribution:

Grating on each Master Oscillator selects wavelength

to detector~3mm

~3mm

MASTER-OSCILLATOR POWER-AMPLIFIER

ARRAY

Image courtesy of Professor Capasso.

Within the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s

Research and Development Directorate,

resides the Joint Science and Technology

Office for Chemical and Biological Defense.

This publication highlights the organization’s

accomplishments to protect warfighters and

citizens through the innovative application of

science and technology research.

DTRA

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