BAE Systems and Portendo Sign IED Threat Detection Agreement

STOCKHOLM — BAE Sys­tems and Por­tendo AB have signed an agree­ment to co-oper­ate on civ­il and mil­i­tary detec­tion sys­tems for impro­vised explo­sive devices.

Por­tendo devel­op­men­tal sen­sor on BAE Sys­tems Lemur tur­ret Source: BAE Systems

The agree­ment means that BAE Sys­tems obtains an exclu­sive license to mar­ket, sell and man­u­fac­ture Portendo’s P.Eye‑S in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, for the civ­il mar­ket. The P.Eye‑S is Portendo’s first prod­uct for remote detec­tion of explo­sives, pro­vid­ing safer work­ing con­di­tions for secu­ri­ty per­son­nel at air­ports, mil­i­tary estab­lish­ments, gov­ern­ment build­ings and oth­er poten­tial targets. 

The agree­ment also cov­ers the devel­op­ment of a mil­i­tary detec­tion sys­tem for road­side bombs based on this tech­nol­o­gy. It will, under a sep­a­rate license agree­ment, be man­u­fac­tured and sold exclu­sive­ly by BAE Systems. 

This tech­nol­o­gy can be adapt­ed to vehi­cle-mount­ed weapons and sen­sor sys­tems, such as BAE Sys­tems’ Lemur, help­ing troops to secure an area and clear con­cealed explo­sives from a safe distance. 

“We have worked with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives for coun­ter­ing the impro­vised explo­sive device threat and the Por­tendo equip­ment is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ground break­ing. This agree­ment will ensure that tech­nolo­gies devel­oped in sup­port of the war against ter­ror­ism are exploit­ed in the most effi­cient way,” said Ulf Eine­fors, head of busi­ness devel­op­ment for BAE Sys­tems Weapons. 

“Our sys­tem has a great poten­tial in the home­land secu­ri­ty mar­ket in the US and Cana­da and, with fur­ther devel­op­ment, for IED clear­ance on mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. With its vast expe­ri­ence in the defence mar­ket, BAE Sys­tems is an ide­al part­ner for us when it comes to devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing of such prod­ucts,” said Por­tendo CEO Gunil­la Savring. 

Notes to Edi­tors

Swedish threat detec­tion and secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Por­tendo, work­ing with the FOI (the Swedish Defence Research Agency), devel­oped the P.Eye tech­nol­o­gy which can detect minute quan­ti­ties of explo­sives using lasers. 

Their detec­tion meth­ods are based on the phe­nom­e­non known as Raman scat­ter­ing (C. V. Raman was award­ed the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his dis­cov­ery) which pro­vides a unique mol­e­c­u­lar sig­na­ture enabling selec­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. The Raman scat­ter­ing is trig­gered by ener­giz­ing the sub­stance with direct­ed ener­gy from laser beams. 

The civ­il P.Eye‑S sys­tem is opti­mized for vehi­cle check points. It works by aim­ing a laser beam at a par­tic­u­lar area on the tar­get vehi­cle. The reflect­ed light is col­lect­ed by the appa­ra­tus and is analysed using the Raman scat­ter­ing method, which pro­vides a unique mol­e­c­u­lar sig­na­ture which can be com­pared against an explo­sives database. 

Por­tendo uses pro­pri­etary, patent-applied enhance­ments to Raman spec­troscopy to enhance the oth­er­wise weak Raman sig­nal and achieve per­for­mance improve­ments of sev­er­al orders of mag­ni­tude over the orig­i­nal technology. 

About BAE Sys­tems
BAE Sys­tems is a glob­al defence, secu­ri­ty and aero­space com­pa­ny with approx­i­mate­ly 107,000 employ­ees world­wide. The Com­pa­ny deliv­ers a full range of prod­ucts and ser­vices for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced elec­tron­ics, secu­ri­ty, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions and cus­tomer sup­port ser­vices. In 2009 BAE Sys­tems report­ed sales of £22.4 bil­lion (US$ 36.2 billion).

About Por­tendo
Por­tendo devel­ops and mar­kets stand-off threat detec­tion equip­ment for home­land secu­ri­ty, mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial secu­ri­ty indus­tries. Their patent-pend­ing tech­nol­o­gy can increase safe­ty and oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty in high-risk envi­ron­ments by pro­vid­ing quick and reli­able detec­tion of explo­sives, war­fare agents and haz­ardous chem­i­cals. The tech­nol­o­gy has been devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al high-rank­ing research insti­tutes and has pro­duced world-lead­ing results.

Find out more at www.portendo.com

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please contact 

Stephen Bethel, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: +44 (0)7793 426328
stephen.bethel@baesystems.com

Kata­ri­na Tol­gfors, BAE Sys­tems
Tel: +46 73 668 22 58
katarina.tolgfors@baesystems.se

Issued by

BAE Sys­tems, Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire GU14 6YU, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1252 384719 Fax: +44 (0) 1252 383947
24hr media hot­line: + 44 (0) 7801 717739
www.baesystems.com

Press release
BAE Systems