Site Description

Fort Bliss is located in three counties, Dona Ana and Otero counties in New Mexico and El Paso County in Texas. The cantonment area is situated adjacent to the city of El Paso, Texas, just north of the city of Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The installation encompasses approximately 1.1 million acres.

The ESTCP demonstration is being conducted on a 5-acre subset of the closed Castner Range Munitions Response Site (MRS) on Fort Bliss. The MRS is now 7,007 acres after acreage east of U.S. Highway 54 was transferred to non-DoD entities.

Suspected Munitions Present at the Demonstration Site

37-mm, 75-mm, 105-mm, 155-mm, and 240-mm HE projectiles

155-mm shrapnel projectiles

37-mm, 75-mm, and 8-inch armor piercing projectiles

60-mm and 81-mm mortars

Demonstration Summary

The TEMTADS 2x2, an advanced EMI system, was used in a litter-carried configuration to collect five acres of dynamic detection survey data. The demonstrators preprocessed their detection survey data, and in conjunction with the Program Office, identified anomalies. Approximately 1,500 anomalies were selected from the dynamic survey data for subsequent cued interrogation with the TEMTADS 2x2. The data analysis demonstrators employed physics-based models to extract target parameters and then classification algorithms to produce a ranked anomaly list.

The site was seeded with inert munitions, and all anomalies were dug to confirm technology performance. Demonstrators will be scored based on their ability to eliminate nonhazardous items while retaining all detected munitions. Results of the data analysis from this demonstration will be posted as they become available.

Demonstration Projects

The Effect of Noise on EM61-MK2 and MetalMapper Classification StrategiesLead Organization: ARCADIS/Malcolm Pirnie

Comprehensive MMRP Live Site Technology Demonstration of Advanced Geophysics and Advanced Classification MethodsLead Organization: URS Group, Inc.

Tensor Invariant Processing of Multistatic EMI Data for Target ClassificationLead Organization: Leidos

Dipole Discrimination Techniques Applied to Live SitesLead Organization: Black Tusk Geophysics, Inc.

Continued Discrimination Demonstration Using Advanced EMI Models at Live UXO Sites: Data Quality Assessment and Residual Risk Mitigation in Real TimeLead Organization: Dartmouth College/White River Technologies