Site Description
The War Department acquired the Camp Butner, North Carolina, property from private land owners in 1942 to be used primarily for the training of infantry divisions and miscellaneous artillery and engineering units. Currently, the former Camp Butner is comprised of about 40,384 acres located approximately 15 miles north of Durham. The site contains wooded areas with grassy fields interspersed that are used for residential and agricultural purposes. The ESTCP demonstration was performed on an open portion of the site referred to as “Area A.”
Munitions Present at the Demonstration Site
37mm, 105mm, and 155mm projectiles
Demonstration Summary
The objective for this site was to demonstrate commercial and advanced systems that were successful at the former Camp San Luis Obispo and increase the difficulty of the demonstration by including 37mm projectiles. Many sites contain this munition, and it has proven to be difficult to classify using commercial sensors and traditional analysis methods due to its smaller size.
Beginning in the spring of 2010, a number of commercial and developmental EMI systems were demonstrated at the former Camp Butner. The commercial Geonics EM61-MK2 sensor was used in a single-sensor cart configuration for full coverage of the site. In addition, two developmental EMI systems were used to perform cued interrogation. The Naval Research Laboratory’s Time Domain Electromagnetic Multi-sensor Towed Array Detection System (TEMTADS) array was used for cued interrogation of the anomalies detected by the EM61 survey. Geometrics’ MetalMapper system was used in survey mode to identify anomalies and then returned in cued mode to classify the anomalies it detected.
The site was seeded with inert munitions, and all anomalies were dug to confirm technology performance. Demonstrators were scored based on their ability to eliminate nonhazardous items while retaining all detected munitions.
Results and Conclusions
Advanced sensor analysts were able to correctly identify almost 95% of the clutter while retaining 100% of the munitions. Though not all of the analysts and methods were able to achieve these impressive results, these results provide further indication of the excellent potential for classification to lead to significant cost savings in the munitions response process, even at sites with small munitions and significant clutter such as was found at the former Camp Butner.
Analysis of the EM61-MK2 data was not particularly successful at Camp Butner; all demonstrators missed a number of munitions after their threshold and only correctly identified about 10% of the clutter once they achieved 100% identification of the munitions present. There were several differences from the previous classification demonstrations that led to this result. The small size of many of the targets at Camp Butner resulted in low signal-to-noise anomalies in the EM61 data, which, coupled with the high density of anomalies at this site, made it difficult to extract reliable parameters from many of the anomalies. In addition, many of the clutter items consisted of fragments from larger projectiles that were roughly similar in overall size and wall thickness to the 37-mm projectiles. Thus, neither of the parameters available from the EM61-MK2 data was useful as a discriminant at Camp Butner.
Summary Report
Summary Report: Former Camp Butner - ESTCP Classification Demonstration
Demonstration Reports
Practical Strategies for UXO DiscriminationLead Organization: Black Tusk Geophysics, Inc.
Final Report: Demonstration and Validation of Statistical Analysis Techniques for TOI Discrimination Using Advanced EMI Sensor SystemsLead Organization: Signal Innovations Group, Inc.
Technical Report: Demonstration Of Advanced EMI Models For Live-Site UXO Discrimination At Former Camp Butner, North CarolinaLead Organization: Sky Research, Inc.
Interim Report: Former Camp Butner - 2010 ESTCP UXO Classification StudyLead Organization: SAIC
Final Report: Former Camp Butner - ESTCP Classification DemonstrationLead Organization: Institute for Defense Analysis
Final Report: Former Camp Butner - MetalMapperLead Organization: Geometrics
Technical Report: EM61-MK2 Response of Standard Munitions ItemsLead Organization: Naval Research Laboratory
Demonstration Report: Former Camp Butner - TEMTADSLead Organization: Naval Research Laboratory/Nova Research, Inc.
