Biological Systems (paper I)

The best way to find buried ordnance (e.g., landmines) is to detect the explosive packaged inside. This expedient would eliminate detection of the ground clutter, such as shrapnel and stray metal fragments, that produce the great number of false positive signals and which slow down detection rates to unacceptable levels. The detection of the explosive is essentially what trained dogs do as they sniff out explosives vapors in the air above or near buried ordnance. While dogs remain the gold standard in landmine detection their application will always be severely limited. Another method must be found to identify explosive residue over wide areas.