White Paper Summary

Protecting Units from Harmful Hazards is Essential to Preserve Combat Power

CBRN agents and Toxic Industrial Chemicals and materials represent a growing threat to the safety of military operations. Early-warning detectors should not only detect CWAs but also various listed high hazard risk chemicals simultaneously, such as hydrogen cyanide, chlorine, ammonia, cyanogen, hydrogen fluoride etc. Processing industry facilities that use radioactive materials as part of their normal operations creates substantial and foreseeable risks and threats under battle conditions.

Early Warning Enables Immediate Protection

It is important for all units to have at least early-warning chemical and radiation detection capability, to timely start protection actions and avoid contamination. Operations and preparation under the threat of CBRN are as normal as preparing to operate in night-time. All units and their vehicles should be equipped with a minimum level of CR early-warning systems to have time to get protected and to create overall situational awareness of the operational area. The specialised CBRN units are just one tool in creating CBRN situational awareness just like a land mine is just one tool for anti-tank operations. It’s easier and cheaper to prepare for CBRN threat than to react when it hits.

Vehicle systems should be small sized, compact, scalable, and modular to fit in different vehicle types and to fulfil the users’ needs and lower the logistic burden.

The new X-System architecture supports the construction of scalable, modular, and compact CBRN monitoring systems allowing it to cover the various categories, sizes and operational roles of armoured vehicles.

CBRN early-warning systems should have multiple technology sensors (orthogonal) as US and Norwegian Armies stated in their CBRN Field Manuals and chemical sensors studies, to get high quality results for determining further actions.  It is recommended to use devices with orthogonal sensor technology, that allow for easy and clear understanding of the chemical type and group, its threat level, and even direction, while the highest level of alarm is indicated. Reliable sensors and merged information create situational awareness by providing timely early warning for CBRN threats and information for smart use of protection and to start other countermeasures.

The views and opinions expressed in the article above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Bertin Environics. Any content provided by the authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, neither they serve as a scientific statement.

Author

Toni Leikas

Training Manager

I am Toni, a CBRN professional with over 20-year experience in training and educating Security and CBRN matters. I have trained operators from over 50 different nationalities, from a wide range of occupational areas from First Responders to Scientists.

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2 Responses to “Armoured Vehicles in Challenging CBRN Operational Environment”

  1. Alan Tanovic

    Hi Toni,

    I stumbled across the article on the Coriolis Compact and have a few general questions. I understand that it is an air sampler and with the sample collected and a specific PCR (which is not included) it could do a biological warfare agent test. Have I got that right?
    If so, is this type of device also suitable for sample collection mounted on a robot? In any case, could you send me some information about how it works and previous applications. Many thanks in advance

  2. Toni Leikas

    Thank You Alan for your interest for biological detection and sampling.

    Yes with the sample and a PCR test analyzer you can do a warfare agent test. You will need the right PCR test too because in biology you can not test without knowing what you are searching for. To be clearer, if you want to test pestis you need to sample with Coriolis and test it in the PCR with the pestis test specifically.

    Also Coriolis can be implemented on vehicle o robot but there is an interface to develop for automatic use for example or something with a trigger.

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