Force protection

This paper is concerned with rapid, continuous inspection of vehicles entering military facilities or compounds, searching for high explosives, or the rapid survey of facilities if it is found that security has been breached. The author reviews methods which are in use now, including: x-rays; x-ray tomography; thermal or fast neutrons; quadrupole resonance; trace detection; electron capture; chemiluminesence; ion mobility spectroscopy; mass spectroscopy; antibodies; and layered, synergistic approaches. He then discusses the limitations of these methods and proposes new approaches which are a combination of old techniques such as weighing vehicles with technological advances in some present methods