Capt Tiffany Bendorf Advisors: Ken Davidson (NPS) and Andy Goroch (NRL) Sponsor: AFWA

1. Experiment for this thesis was performed at Buckley Airburst Range, CO 12-18 Nov 06. FIELD TEST ASSESSMENT OF UTILIZATION OF WEATHER IMPACT DECISION AIDS FOR IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE (IED) DETECTION 15 Nov 2021Z: view direction north, estimated range is 2 miles, mode is WHOT and buried shell targets are white. The sun is nearly behind the camera view angle. Capt Tiffany Bendorf Advisors: Ken Davidson (NPS) and Andy Goroch (NRL) Sponsor: AFWA Beneficiary: IR capable assets supporting troops on the ground • STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM • Identification of areas on the ground that have been disturbed which may contain a buried object using thermal infrared (IR) images • Optimal utilization of assets using weather impact decision aids 15 Nov 2015Z: view direction is southwest, estimated range is .51 miles, mode is WHOT and buried shells are black. The camera is facing into the sun. This demonstrates the dominance of reflectance in this view direction in the MWIR sensors that make up the total radiometric temperature (Reflectance + Emittance). This is currently not considered in any weather impact decision aid IR models. • RESULTS • Soil measurements and weather impacts were applied to three experimental target model predictions: trends in prediction errors are common among all three • Ground truth MWIR imagery showed impacts of sun angle on view direction and delta T for optimal time of day in detection of buried IEDs