Professor William Tong, San Diego State University, has been developing uses for lasers for over 20 years. He is now working on a laser to help detect IED(Improvised Explosive Devices). Check it out. Click the link for a few pics of the good professor and his work!
Of bombs and beams
SDSU professor focuses laser research on finding killer explosives in Iraq
By Bruce Lieberman
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 27, 2005
For 20 years, professor William Tong has studied laser light in a quest to help develop drugs and detect pollution. Since the Iraq war began, he has also focused his lasers on the search for explosives.
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, kill troops and civilians in Iraq almost daily. Yet U.S. troops don't have a reliable and portable device to detect chemicals used in bombs.
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
William Tong, a professor of laser spectroscopy and biophysics at San Diego State University, hopes to use laser technology to defeat improvised explosive devices. Congress has placed a priority on research and training to combat IEDs.
"We've known all along that these (laser techniques) are really sensitive and applicable to a lot of things . . . and now you hear about all these IEDs in Iraq," said Tong, a professor of laser spectroscopy and biophysics at San Diego State University.
"We wanted to adapt this existing technology and contribute in some small way to maybe prevent these attacks."
Tong's project, which recently received an $80,000 seed grant from the Department of Defense, is one of many under way in San Diego County and elsewhere to fight the IED threat. While designed for the war in Iraq, some of these technologies are expected to be valuable in the long-term fight against domestic terrorism.
Using lasers
to detect explosives
The efforts include chemical sensors such as Tong's laser detector, instruments that use microwaves to see through walls and pinpoint hidden caches of weapons, devices that jam the electronic signals for detonating roadside bombs and pulses of electromagnetic energy that destroy the circuits used to trigger bombs.
Congress has placed a priority on paying for research and training to combat IEDs.
It approved $1.2 billion this year to support the Defense Department's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force. Established by the Army in 2003, the task force involves all branches of the U.S. military and Israel, Australia, Canada and Britain. The goal is to minimize the threat of IEDs worldwide.
This month, the Defense Department said the task force will have its headquarters at Fort Irwin, a sprawling Army base 37 miles northeast of Barstow. Soldiers will be trained in a variety of ways to detect bombs, including how to use robotics and unmanned aircraft.
"We've got to help these guys before they deploy," Army Lt. Col. Thomas Magness said about the need to give troops the technology and skills to detect IEDs.
Incredible precision
The Pentagon is interested in Tong's technology because his detector relies on lasers found in everyday electronics such as compact disc and DVD players.
What's new is how Tong uses lasers to identify impurities in air, water and other substances.
For example, by analyzing how the chemical molecules in TNT interact with the light, Tong can detect minute amounts of the substance. How minute is almost unimaginable.
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
SDSU professor William Tong hopes that his laser technology will someday protect U.S. troops from improvised explosive devices. The Pentagon is interested in Tong's work because he uses lasers found in everyday electronics such as compact disc and DVD players.
Tong's techniques can isolate a few molecules of a foreign substance in a liter of gas or water, he said. Detecting something that precisely is akin to picking out one particular second from 500 million years.
"It's extraordinarily accurate," said Tom Scott, vice president for research at SDSU.
Tong's detector would employ a technology called laser wave mixing. In this approach, two or more intersecting beams of laser light cross a sample of air, water or other medium.
At the point where the beams cross, a predictable pattern of interfering light waves appears. It's similar to the pattern that intersecting ripples in a pond would make.
If a substance exists at the spot where the laser beams cross, its molecules would disturb the beams' interference pattern.
How that pattern is disturbed provides a signature of what kind of molecule is present. For example, a TNT molecule would disturb the light pattern differently than would a hydrocarbon molecule found in fuel exhaust.
Tong's invention would identify all the substances it finds.
Other applications
Currently, instruments that pinpoint chemicals with a degree of specificity comparable to Tong's detector are massive and expensive contraptions, said Michael Rondelli, a program manager for SDSU's technology transfer office.
For instance, high-resolution mass spectrometers cost more than $1 million each, are impossibly large for field use and take a long time to make analyses, Tong said.
By comparison, the cost of the professor's detector is put at tens of thousands of dollars, Rondelli said.
Another potential advantage of the technology, Tong said, is that it can be packaged for maximum portability. As envisioned, soldiers could carry the detector in a backpack. The machine also could be mounted on an armored vehicle, on a robot or aboard a small unmanned aircraft.
Tong hopes to develop an instrument that can detect explosives from 110 yards away. Accomplishing the goal could take years of research and development, however.
While Tong's team is collaborating with the Defense Department, the laser detector also might work for homeland security. It and other detection methods might be effective at border crossings and U.S. ports of entry, homeland-security experts have said.
In addition, "You could give it to every police department and fire department," Rondelli said.
Tong said he might be able to design his laser detector so it recognizes different isotopes, or forms, of radiation. The machine would distinguish between radiation that people carry in their bodies after a medical procedure and the kind used in a radioactive "dirty bomb."
Nowadays, most radiological detectors simply measure the presence of radiation, not what type, Tong said.
For example, the radiological detectors at the San Ysidro border checkpoint "are good for a first line of detection, but they cannot tell the exact difference between different isotopes," he said.
Combating IEDs
Research on the IED threat has focused on a range of countermeasures, according to a Nov. 23 report by the Congressional Research Service, a public-policy research arm for Congress.
One of them involves sending out microwaves to locate caches of weapons used by insurgents. Code-named "PING," the project has equipped some Humvees with test machines featuring such waves.
Another project relies on sensors that use lasers in a way different than Tong's detector. These sensors break apart molecules before analyzing them, as opposed to examining how they interact with laser light.
The so-called Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy system, still in development, would detect traces of explosives from up to 33 yards away.
It's unclear whether the "LIBS" system would have the sensitivity needed to detect small numbers of molecules or be specific enough to distinguish one chemical from another.
A third Pentagon project, "Neutralizing Improvised Explosive Devices With Radio Frequency," is based at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. Researchers there want to build a device that would produce a high-frequency field of energy at a very short range.
The machine would basically fry the electronics of nearby IEDs.
A fourth countermeasure harnesses energy from low-power radio frequencies to block the electrical signals used to detonate IEDs. The signals might come from a cell phone, satellite phone or long-range cordless telephone.
The Army has ordered thousands of these radio-frequency jamming devices. But some defense experts warn that such devices are effective only if they jam the right frequency for each signal in question.
Challenges abound
Academic institutions, including the University of California San Diego, and businesses nationwide are searching for ways to detect chemicals used in explosives. Two prominent companies are Smiths Detection in Wiesbaden, Germany, and Nomadics in Stillwater, Okla.
Nomadics, collaborating with a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed instruments that can recognize minute amounts of explosive vapor emanating from land mines. The so-called "Dog Nose" program emulates the capabilities of dogs trained to look for mines.
Daylight Solutions of Poway is working on portable devices that the military can use to detect compounds found in explosives, harmful gases and biochemical agents.
The researchers face a spectrum of hurdles.
Detecting explosives from a distance is extremely difficult, especially when an instrument must pinpoint just a few molecules of a certain chemical, said Cliff Anderson, a program officer for the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.
"The problem you run into is you have to be near the molecules," said Anderson, who has worked on IED countermeasure projects. For example, chemical vapors emanating from bombs sealed in a steel case can be tough to detect from afar.
Tong recognizes the challenges.
"When the bombs are sealed, the vapor levels are very low," he explained. "You have to have detectors that are more and more sensitive."
Overall, success in the laboratory will be hard to transfer to a road in Iraq.
"Finding something that works in a practical operational scenario, where you can actually get close enough to the device to make a detection without it being detonated in your face, is different," Anderson said.
"An IED is something you don't ever get close to, or it will be detonated and everything will be destroyed. It's not like a land mine. There's somebody watching it."
Of bombs and beams
SDSU professor focuses laser research on finding killer explosives in Iraq
By Bruce Lieberman
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 27, 2005
For 20 years, professor William Tong has studied laser light in a quest to help develop drugs and detect pollution. Since the Iraq war began, he has also focused his lasers on the search for explosives.
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, kill troops and civilians in Iraq almost daily. Yet U.S. troops don't have a reliable and portable device to detect chemicals used in bombs.
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
William Tong, a professor of laser spectroscopy and biophysics at San Diego State University, hopes to use laser technology to defeat improvised explosive devices. Congress has placed a priority on research and training to combat IEDs.
"We've known all along that these (laser techniques) are really sensitive and applicable to a lot of things . . . and now you hear about all these IEDs in Iraq," said Tong, a professor of laser spectroscopy and biophysics at San Diego State University.
"We wanted to adapt this existing technology and contribute in some small way to maybe prevent these attacks."
Tong's project, which recently received an $80,000 seed grant from the Department of Defense, is one of many under way in San Diego County and elsewhere to fight the IED threat. While designed for the war in Iraq, some of these technologies are expected to be valuable in the long-term fight against domestic terrorism.
Using lasers
to detect explosives
The efforts include chemical sensors such as Tong's laser detector, instruments that use microwaves to see through walls and pinpoint hidden caches of weapons, devices that jam the electronic signals for detonating roadside bombs and pulses of electromagnetic energy that destroy the circuits used to trigger bombs.
Congress has placed a priority on paying for research and training to combat IEDs.
It approved $1.2 billion this year to support the Defense Department's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force. Established by the Army in 2003, the task force involves all branches of the U.S. military and Israel, Australia, Canada and Britain. The goal is to minimize the threat of IEDs worldwide.
This month, the Defense Department said the task force will have its headquarters at Fort Irwin, a sprawling Army base 37 miles northeast of Barstow. Soldiers will be trained in a variety of ways to detect bombs, including how to use robotics and unmanned aircraft.
"We've got to help these guys before they deploy," Army Lt. Col. Thomas Magness said about the need to give troops the technology and skills to detect IEDs.
Incredible precision
The Pentagon is interested in Tong's technology because his detector relies on lasers found in everyday electronics such as compact disc and DVD players.
What's new is how Tong uses lasers to identify impurities in air, water and other substances.
For example, by analyzing how the chemical molecules in TNT interact with the light, Tong can detect minute amounts of the substance. How minute is almost unimaginable.
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
SDSU professor William Tong hopes that his laser technology will someday protect U.S. troops from improvised explosive devices. The Pentagon is interested in Tong's work because he uses lasers found in everyday electronics such as compact disc and DVD players.
Tong's techniques can isolate a few molecules of a foreign substance in a liter of gas or water, he said. Detecting something that precisely is akin to picking out one particular second from 500 million years.
"It's extraordinarily accurate," said Tom Scott, vice president for research at SDSU.
Tong's detector would employ a technology called laser wave mixing. In this approach, two or more intersecting beams of laser light cross a sample of air, water or other medium.
At the point where the beams cross, a predictable pattern of interfering light waves appears. It's similar to the pattern that intersecting ripples in a pond would make.
If a substance exists at the spot where the laser beams cross, its molecules would disturb the beams' interference pattern.
How that pattern is disturbed provides a signature of what kind of molecule is present. For example, a TNT molecule would disturb the light pattern differently than would a hydrocarbon molecule found in fuel exhaust.
Tong's invention would identify all the substances it finds.
Other applications
Currently, instruments that pinpoint chemicals with a degree of specificity comparable to Tong's detector are massive and expensive contraptions, said Michael Rondelli, a program manager for SDSU's technology transfer office.
For instance, high-resolution mass spectrometers cost more than $1 million each, are impossibly large for field use and take a long time to make analyses, Tong said.
By comparison, the cost of the professor's detector is put at tens of thousands of dollars, Rondelli said.
Another potential advantage of the technology, Tong said, is that it can be packaged for maximum portability. As envisioned, soldiers could carry the detector in a backpack. The machine also could be mounted on an armored vehicle, on a robot or aboard a small unmanned aircraft.
Tong hopes to develop an instrument that can detect explosives from 110 yards away. Accomplishing the goal could take years of research and development, however.
While Tong's team is collaborating with the Defense Department, the laser detector also might work for homeland security. It and other detection methods might be effective at border crossings and U.S. ports of entry, homeland-security experts have said.
In addition, "You could give it to every police department and fire department," Rondelli said.
Tong said he might be able to design his laser detector so it recognizes different isotopes, or forms, of radiation. The machine would distinguish between radiation that people carry in their bodies after a medical procedure and the kind used in a radioactive "dirty bomb."
Nowadays, most radiological detectors simply measure the presence of radiation, not what type, Tong said.
For example, the radiological detectors at the San Ysidro border checkpoint "are good for a first line of detection, but they cannot tell the exact difference between different isotopes," he said.
Combating IEDs
Research on the IED threat has focused on a range of countermeasures, according to a Nov. 23 report by the Congressional Research Service, a public-policy research arm for Congress.
One of them involves sending out microwaves to locate caches of weapons used by insurgents. Code-named "PING," the project has equipped some Humvees with test machines featuring such waves.
Another project relies on sensors that use lasers in a way different than Tong's detector. These sensors break apart molecules before analyzing them, as opposed to examining how they interact with laser light.
The so-called Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy system, still in development, would detect traces of explosives from up to 33 yards away.
It's unclear whether the "LIBS" system would have the sensitivity needed to detect small numbers of molecules or be specific enough to distinguish one chemical from another.
A third Pentagon project, "Neutralizing Improvised Explosive Devices With Radio Frequency," is based at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. Researchers there want to build a device that would produce a high-frequency field of energy at a very short range.
The machine would basically fry the electronics of nearby IEDs.
A fourth countermeasure harnesses energy from low-power radio frequencies to block the electrical signals used to detonate IEDs. The signals might come from a cell phone, satellite phone or long-range cordless telephone.
The Army has ordered thousands of these radio-frequency jamming devices. But some defense experts warn that such devices are effective only if they jam the right frequency for each signal in question.
Challenges abound
Academic institutions, including the University of California San Diego, and businesses nationwide are searching for ways to detect chemicals used in explosives. Two prominent companies are Smiths Detection in Wiesbaden, Germany, and Nomadics in Stillwater, Okla.
Nomadics, collaborating with a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed instruments that can recognize minute amounts of explosive vapor emanating from land mines. The so-called "Dog Nose" program emulates the capabilities of dogs trained to look for mines.
Daylight Solutions of Poway is working on portable devices that the military can use to detect compounds found in explosives, harmful gases and biochemical agents.
The researchers face a spectrum of hurdles.
Detecting explosives from a distance is extremely difficult, especially when an instrument must pinpoint just a few molecules of a certain chemical, said Cliff Anderson, a program officer for the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.
"The problem you run into is you have to be near the molecules," said Anderson, who has worked on IED countermeasure projects. For example, chemical vapors emanating from bombs sealed in a steel case can be tough to detect from afar.
Tong recognizes the challenges.
"When the bombs are sealed, the vapor levels are very low," he explained. "You have to have detectors that are more and more sensitive."
Overall, success in the laboratory will be hard to transfer to a road in Iraq.
"Finding something that works in a practical operational scenario, where you can actually get close enough to the device to make a detection without it being detonated in your face, is different," Anderson said.
"An IED is something you don't ever get close to, or it will be detonated and everything will be destroyed. It's not like a land mine. There's somebody watching it."