These days it seems like everybody and everything in the U.S. military is trying to find and destroy Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq. Cold War weapons such as Prowler jammer 
planes have joined new blast-proof vehicles and a gazillion kinds of robots in the counter-IED fight. One of the latest systems? A robotic chopper equipped with the latest sensors capable of seeing underground to spot buried roadside bombs. The Army is buying the $9-million Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout drones to outfit Future Combat Systems brigades beginning around 2010. The Fire Scouts will come equipped with an advanced infrared sensor built by DRS, based in New Jersey, and integrated by Northrop Grumman. The Army calls it Advanced Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Minefield Detection System, or ASTAMIDS.
Technically, the sensor is for detecting underground mines. But there's little difference between a buried mine and a buried IED, says DRS vice president Tim Harrison. Plus the Fire Scout's suite of sensors are capable of "change detection" -- that is, spotting disturbed earth or new piles of debris that might indicate a freshly planted bomb. The idea is you tell your Fire Scout to search a particular area; it executes its own search pattern and reports back anything significant findings. As for what entails significant: Northrop Grumman is still working that out. (Deciding what a drone is allowed to do on its own and what information it is required to report is a major problem for robot developers.)
DRS should deliver the first two ASTAMIDS this summer. But the drones they're supposed to be fitted to are sitting in a warehouse because their control systems, based on the troubled Jitters radio, won't be ready for another three years. That's Army bureaucracy for you.
--David Axe, cross-posted at War Is Boring
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