Detection performance assessment of hand-held mine detection systems in a procurement process: test set-up for MDs and MD/GPRs

The Engineers Centre of Expertise of the Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) has conducted a study on countermine in peace operations. This study, finished in 2002, concluded that the final solution to countermine will depend in the first place on better detection of buried low-metal mines, e.g. by direct detection of the explosive components in mines. Until such detection systems are available, intermediate solutions are necessary in order to assure freedom of movement in peace operations. Because countermine operations consist of a number of different activities (area preparation, detection, clearance, etc) and the suitability of the different types of available equipment depends on the scenario, the toolbox concept for countermine equipment was adopted. In 2003 a procurement process was started in order to fill this toolbox with commercial-off-the-shelf and military-off-the-shelf equipment. The paper gives a concise description of the study on countermine operations and the procurement process, and subsequently focuses on the set-up of the tests that were conducted in the framework of the procurement of hand-held mine detection systems, like metal detectors and dual-sensor mine detectors. Programs of requirements for these systems were drawn up, aiming at systems for general use and special purpose systems. Blind tests to check the compliancy to the detection performance requirements were designed and conducted in the short timeframe that was available in the procurement process. These tests are discussed in this paper, including the set-up of the test lanes, the targets used and their depths, and the role of the operator. The tests of the capability of the detectors to discriminate small targets adjacent to large targets were conducted according the guidelines of the CEN Workshop Agreement on metal detector tests. Although the results of the tests are commercially confidential, conclusions and lessons learned from the execution of these tests are presented