Several technologies are in the
works to enhance the speed, accuracy, and safety of border security. Those include palm prints,
DNA, gait, space between the eyes,
license plate recognition, and vehicle detection and tracking.
Palm prints can be lifted from
bombs or fragments, and can be
stored in IDENT. Federal experts
still are considering how to tie DNA
into their processes for screening
refugees and immigrants in border
operations, identifying family lines,
and augmenting existing forensic
processes. DNA is expected to have
a much more significant role in the
next five to ten years.
Gait, or how someone walks, is
unique. A gait that differs significantly from the norm may indicate
a suspect is carrying a heavy or
dangerous load. Micro-expressions
and Interocular Distance (space
between the eyes) could benefit
down the road. License plate recognition and vehicle detection and
tracking could help resolve any
questions before a suspect is close
to human guards. LPR is more common in the U.S.
“Any of those new modalities
require creating ways to collect and
store them on the database, then
put into the watch list, and match
them in real time,” CERDEC’s Riser
says. “We’re definitely looking at
data collection and dissemination
from any platform, but we also want
to move processing into the cloud,
so the collection device is agnostic.
The goal remains providing a rapid
response following data collection.”
Another CERDEC directorate,
Night Vision & Electronic Sensors
(NVESD) at Fort Belvoir, Va., estab-
lished a counter-terrorism branch
shortly after 9/11 to develop elec-
tro-optical threat sensors. Their cur-
rent focus is on perimeter security.
“We began working about 10
years ago with DHS on joint urgent
operational requirements called
Base Expeditionary Targeting
Surveillance Systems−Combined
(BETSS-C),” says Len Ramboyong,
chief of the NVESD Counter-Terrorism Branch. “That resulted in
a group of force protection equipment used for perimeter security.
Part of that suite was a system
called Cerberus, consisting of visual
and infrared imaging, unattended
ground sensors, and radars to
detect targets.”
A major drawback with BETSS-C
was the inability of five or six of its
different systems to talk to each
other. Each had to have its own
operator sending information into
a technical operations center to
make sense of the different inputs.
That led to a real push for interop-
erability in the systems CERDEC
developed later.
Resolution and deployability
“We are working on enhancements
that will go into the Ground-Based
Operational Surveillance System-Expeditionary (GBOSS-E) to meet
a new requirement for better
resolution and be more deploy-able, so they can be moved easily
without a large logistic footprint,”
Ramboyong says. “We’re working
on sensor resolution, improving
