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The Development of a Monitoring System for Use in Iraq

David A. Fuess

This paper was prepared for submittal to the Nonproliferation & Arms Control Technologies Workshop

Livermore, California September 1620,1996

August 12, 1996

This is a preprint of a paper intended for publication in a journal or proceedings. Since changes may be made before publication, this preprint is made available with the understanding that it will not be cited or reproduced without the permission of the author.

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Thisdocumentwaspreparedasan accountof worksponsoredbyanagencyof the UnitedStatesGovernmennt Neitherthe United States Governmentnor theUniversityof California norany of theiremployees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, oruseWllessofanyinformation,apparatus,product,orprocessdisdosed,or repreatsthat itsuse wouldnot infringe privately own rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, pr-, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise,does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation,or favoringbythe UnitedStatesGovernmentor theuniversityof California. Theviewsand opinionsofauthorsexprrssed herein donotnecessarilystateorretlectthoseof theUnitedStatesGovemment or the University of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

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The DeveloDment of a Remote Monitoring Svstem for use in Iraq

David A. Fuess Sensor ,4pplications Group

July 10, 1996

Lawrence Liverniore National Laboratory

Livermore CAY 94550 P. 0. BOX 808, L-183

Background In April 1993, the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), through the U. S. Department of State, requested hardware to monitor two rocket motor test stands in Iraq. The Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory responded with project Dustcloud. Within two weeks of the request, LLNL delivered two video monitoring systems which were deployed to Iraq and installed at the A1 h i m solid motor test site and the AI Rafah liquid engine test site, each about 75 km from Baghdad.

The original request included a set of loosely defined requirements to perform remote monitoring in accordance with applicable United Nations Resolutions. The Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad was to be the site of the central monitoring station. While these first systems satisfied the original requirements, they were technically cumbersome and did not lend themselves to easy expansion, or mass production. A request for a second phase design was received in May 1994. The second phase design provided a more general solution to the monitoring requirement and extended the number of monitored facilities to a total of 25 and provided a continuous monitoring capability at a mutually agreed upon site located outside of the monitored country. The phase 11 hardware was placed in service in June 1994.

In both the Phase I and Phase I1 designs we worked against extremely tight time constraints where the schedule was driven solely by international negotiations and agreements. One result of the tight time schedules was the inability to consider a wide range of international sources for the hardware.

The remainder of this paper is devoted to an in depth discussion of the requirements and the hardware design.

Phase I System Design

The Phase I design was specialized to the monitoring of two missile motor test facilities each about 75 km from the monitoring center in Baghdad. Both of these sites required exterior mounted cameras and trigger devices. The control panel equipment and recorders were mounted in the control

rooms which were generally concrete block houses which were open to the environment with no air conditioning.

User Requirements

The user requirements for Phase I were developed through a combination of mitten comments and informal discussions with the requester. In the following list of requirements, the "equipment" refers to the totality of hardware involved in implementing the monitoring mission.

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Outside - The equipment operates in a desert environment with minimal shade. Ambient air temperatures are expected to reach 1 10-120F. Sealed - The equipment is sealed for environmental isolation and to provide security against tampering. Self-powered - External power, when provided, is 22OV 50Hz AC. However, the equipment operates long enough following AC power interruption to permit reasonable technician response times without a lapse in the primary monitoring mission. Triggered response - An external trigger mechanism inifiates reporting and recording mode changes. The external trigger is associated with the monitored activity. In the case of the missile motor test stand monitoring equipment, the trigger is an infrared telescope observing the plume area of the test stand. Communication - The equipment does not rely on locally available communications paths for its primary reporting channel. (This was added in a December 1993 upgrade. The original equipment used standard telephone connections. j Cameras - The equipment usesvideo cameras as the primary means of recording and reporting activity in the monitored area. Recording Modes - The equipment continuously records video frames in a time lapse photography mode. Upon alarm activation the current image from the camera most closely associated with the alarm source is transmitted to the remote monitoring center. Remote Monitoring Center - The remote monitoring center has the following control, indication and operational features: 1) remote control of all on site monitoring equipment, 3) recording capability for received images, 3) review capability for recorded images, 4) automatic alerting and recording on alarm receipt. Maintainability - The equipment is maintainable by in-country technicians without specialized training. All system components shall be provided with complete operation and maintenance manuals. Commercial equipment is to be used to the greatest extent possible.

The Hardware

The block diagram for the initial system design supporting the missile motor test stand monitoring mission is presented in Figure 3 . The major system components, the Northern Information Technology Tele-(NIT) Imager system, the Gyyr time lapse video recorder, and the Optaphone Radio Frequency telephone system are all commercially available. Figure 1 is a photograph showing the internal components of the system. Under normal operation the phone is on-hook, the time lapse video recorder saves images from the attached cameras, and the power is supplied form the local wall power. The solar cells maintain the state of charge on the battery pack in anticipation of external power disruption. The design target for battery operation was several days, however, experience indicates that with the solar charger the system will last indefinitely. A single 6 hour video tape can contain up to 40 days of time lapse video.

The monitoring center consists of a NIT 4000R Phone Line Video Receiver, a video monitor, and a Gyyr video recorder. Using the 4OOOR, the central station operator can contact any remote monitoring station and select one or more remote cameras for display. The display can be either fixed or automaiically updated.

When triggered, the NIT 3 5 OOR at the remote station dials a predefined number for the central monitoring station and initiates the transmissior, of images. The conpanion NIT 4000 device in the monitoring center answers the phone and begins storing the images to a local video recorder.

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! Gyyr Recorder

Figure 3 Prototype System Block Diagram

The Installations

There were two installations made using the initial proof of concept design. One at a solid fuel rocket motor test facility at Al Azim, and the other at a liquid fuel rocket motor test facility at Al Rafah.

Al Azim was instrumented with three video cameras and one IR telescope. Three cameras were installed to observe the test stand from the building exterior, the test stand from inside the test cell, and the control room. The IR teles’cope was focused on the plume area of the test cell and was 95% “blinded” to eliminate triggering by the sun.

At A1 Raf& the situation was much more difficult due to the long standoff distances to the test structure. Here, four cameras each with an associated IR telescope were installed on light standards surrounding the test stand. The IR telescopes were focused on the plume area beneath the test stand.

Phase I1 System Design

The initiai design detailed in the previous chapter established the feasibility and practicality of remote monitoring in hostile political environments. After several months of successful operation the decision was made to extend the monitoring to include first 25 then 35 total facilities. The additional facilities included storage areas, machine shops, chemical processing sites and other industrial type facilities.

The additional ten systems were assembled by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) using fabrication drawings provided by Livennore.

User Requirements

A number of additional requirements were placed on the follow on design as detailed below.

Images stored directly on disk - In the first design, images were all stored on video tape which resulted in the time intensive process of locating and digitizing the relevant frames. A major savings in manpower could be achieved through direct digital storage of images in response to alarms. -Additional sensors - Each installation is to support up to 16 cameras, 3 tape recorders, and up to 12 sensors including IR, temperature, motion, and power. Sensors and cameras may be up to 500m from the node. Sealing and Cooling - Sensitive recording equipment is not highly survivable in desert environments in the presence of blowing sand. The replacement systems are to be environmentally sealed with closed circuit air conditioning to maintain appropriate operaring temperature and humidity inside. Extended range communications - Some of the monitored sites may be up to 300 km from the monitoring center and the number of sites is expected to dramatically increase.

The Hardware

The additional requirements lead to a number of improvements in the design. Most notably, the enclosure for the additional capability is a sealed equipment rack with a side mounted closed cycle air conditioning system. The power distribution system was redesigned to handle the additional power requirements of the expanded monitoring systems and to control the air conditioning unit A new TX-40 based data module replaces the previous NIT 3500R unit. The replacement module handles both trigger and video data. Trigger data is stored in a Monarch data recorder. The video system is remotely controlled with Hyperscan, a PC based software package, from the Baghdad Monitoring Centre Finally, the battery backup system was enhanced to allow up to three days of operation when disconnected from both external power and the solar powered charging system. When under battery power, the AX unit is shutdown and small internal circulating fans are used cool the system. The system block diagram for the remote equipment appears in Figure 6.

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The Baghdad Monitoring Centre equipment includes control and analysis computers (5 -Pes), video duplication and display stations, the central communications station, and an uninterruprable power supply.

The communications system expansion provided an idditional challenge as both the rang.e and number 3f channels were expanded. The decision was made :o remain with the Optaphone RF telephone system md expand its capability to handle 98 telephone lines. A separate equipment rack was installed in the Baghdad Monitoring Centre to house the expanded communication capability. The extended range

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communication paths were accommodated through the addition of lOOni towers and high gain retl ector antennas.

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Figure E Bluck Diagram of Phase I 1 Remote Equipment

The Znstailations

Figure 7 is a photograph of one step in the the fabrication of the Phase 11 equipment to be installed in the monitored locations. Twenty-one of the Phase 11 systems were assembled and tested at LLNL, for installation in Iraq.

The following is a short list of the 12 tons of equipment installed in the second mission:

Equipment list Item

iInstrument Racks 1 {CCD Cameras I

nfrared Motions Sensor

120 Watt Solar Panels of Cable

b8 Line Optaphone 486/66 PCs

Antenna Masts 5 kWUPS J

The loadout plan called for four complete sets of spares. However, during the 6 week fabrication period additional target facilities were added to the list, hence, the all spare parts were shipped to and assembled in Baghdad to provide four additional monitoring systems. This brought the total number of Phase I1 fielded systems to 25.

Baghdad Monitoring Centre

Local Capability

There are two distinct activities which must be maintained to ensure the viability and utility of the monitoring activity. These are ongoing observation of the monitored sites to establish the activity

baseline against which anomalous or suspect activity will be recognized, and maintenance, both preventive and corrective, of the monitoring system hardware. The original concept of operations called for the establishment of a permanently manned United Nations facility in Baghdad to house both of these activities. There is a certain amount of overlap between them in that the analytical activity receives the transmissions from the sites, hence, it is the first to be informed about malfunctions or violations of the hardware.

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With the completion of the Phase I1 design, the Baghdad Operations Centre was permanently established in UN offices at the Canal Hotel. Communications towers and other support equipment were installed in and around the hotel to support continuing operations at the Centre. As installed, both the maintenance and monitoring activities operate out of the same location.

Remote Capability

Continuing operation of the monitoring system, as it was initially conceived, relies on heavy commitments in personnel to staff the operation and logistic support for operations under difficult conditions in remote areas. However, the hardware was designed to support the eventual relocation of the monitoring activity outside of the host country. Significant cost savings and improvement in monitorins capability, with no reduction in monitoring capability, were achieved with the relocation of the monitoring center to Geneva.

Conciusion

Through project Dustcloud, LLhX demonstrated that high quality, commercial equipment based monitoring systems can be rapidly fielded to meet the requirements of international agreements. The monitoring installations and control centers can be configured to maximize the effectiveness of the monitoring mission while minimizing the logistic support base required to maintain them.

Although the initial response to the monitoring concept was somewhat cool, the moniroring acuvity in Iraq is an unqualified success. Following the second installation, the UNSCOM team has continued to locate new sites for monitoring, over 100 have been identified. There is an ongoing effort to upgrade the monitoring equipment for optimum performance. The benefit for Iraq is the cessation of the embargo against oil sales. The benefit to the United Nations is the ability to verify the enabling provisjons of its resolutions. But perhaps the greatest benefit to us all is the establishment of the precedent for and demonstration of the feasibility of remote monitoring as a means to verify compliance in international agreements.

Acknowledgements

This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Enera by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-En~48.