|
The Mine/Minefield detection community's maturing technology base has become a developmental resource for world wide military and humanitarian applications. During the last decade, this community has developed a variety of single and multi-sensor applications incorporating a diversity of sensor and processor technologies. These diverse developments from the Mine/Minefield detection community require appropriate metrics to objectively bound technology and to define applicability to expected military and humanitarian applications. This paper presents a survey of the test methodology, application and analysis activities conducted by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command's, Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) on behalf of the Mine/Minefield detection community. As needs of world wide military and humanitarian mine detection activities are being responded to by notable technology base advances, a diverse pool of knowledge has been developed. The maturity of these technology base advances must be evaluated in a more systematic method. As these technologies mature, metrics have been developed to support the development process and to define the applicability of these technology base advances. The author will review the diversity of the mine detection technology and their related testing strategies. Consideration is given to the impact of history and global realism on the U.S. Army's present mine detection testing program. Further, definitions of testing metrics and analysis will be reviewed. Finally the paper will outline future U.S. Army testing plans with a special consideration given to the Vehicular Mounted Mine Detection/Ground Standoff Mine Detection System (VMMD/GSTAMIDS) Advanced Technology Demonstration and related issues.
|
