Army fields new chemical detection technology
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Chemical weapons pose a serious threat to civilian and war fighter lives, but technology from the U.S. Army Small Business Technology Transfer program reduces those risks. Researchers developed a product to detect chemical weapons accurately at low concentration levels.
Active Army, Reserve and National Guard units started to receive the Chemical Agent Disclosure Spray and the Contamination Indicator/Decontamination Assurance System, known as CIDAS. The Army is fielding it to all units in areas where there is a threat of chemical agents.
The Chemical Agent Disclosure Spray, purchased by FLIR Systems, Inc., has transitioned into the CIDAS Program of Record within the Joint Program Executive Office for CBRN Defense. The research, which began 20 years ago with a business first spun out of the University of Pittsburgh and later acquired by FLIR, as part of a Small Business Technology Transfer contract managed by the Army Research Office.
ARO is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory.
The Army funded the basic research behind this technology at the University of Pittsburgh led by Dr. Alan Russell. Russell worked to identify ways to incorporate enzymes into polymers that would be stabilized for use outside the cell and then ultimately used in realistic battlefield environments.
Typically enzymes are not stable outside the living organism, but Russell’s fundamental polymer and enzyme chemistry research identified a way to maintain high activity of the enzymes for sensing chemicals in realistic battlefield conditions. He then started a small business based on those findings, which FLIR purchased.
https://www.army.mil/article/238845/army_fields_new_chemical_detection_technology