Alion Contract for Sensor Employment Model for Detecting Nuclear Threats

The Air Force has awarded a $6.8 million contract to Alion Science and Technology for conducting research and development of a total modeling and simulation environment to help sensor and sensor technologies’ to be employed to detect nuclear and radiological threats.

The contract was awarded to Alion in the form of a task order for the Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center’s (MSIAC) contract vehicle. Alion will support the mission of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA’s) to protect the U.S. and its allies against weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Alion will enhance the DTRA’s nuclear detector programs’ effectiveness by developing and employing in-depth representations of sensor systems under a realistic WMD scenario.

DTRA is the official combat support agency of the U.S. Department of Defense to tackle WMD for the entire gamut of high yield explosive, chemical, nuclear, radiological and biological threats. The agency’s programs include an inhouse WMD thinktank for anticipation and mitigation of future threats well before they can harm the U.S. and its allies.

The MSIAC is operated by Alion and is among the ten Information Analysis Centers (IACs) of the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). These IACs are used to accommodate libraries of information related to certain areas of technology, besides also offering technical expertise for these fields. The Fort Belvoir, Va. headquartered DTIC serves the DoD by offering access to technical and scientific information for DoD engineers, designers, researchers, contractors and personnel.

The perception and decision making techniques will be automated by Alion to facilitate speedy functioning of nuclear detector simulation programs. Once developed, the systems engineering analysis will be supported by the simulated virtual prototyping environment for evaluation of technological solutions for detection of WMD.

The duration of the performance runs will be from April 1 2010 to March 31 2013.

The Operational Solutions Group’s Manager and Senior Vice President of Alion, Sue Archer informed that the analysis and development of capabilities for critical nuclear detection simulation by Alion will help DTRA to find out the type of WMD technologies and sensors to deploy for providing the ideal first line of defense to warfighters against the threats to the security of the U.S.