Feasibility of a method to identify targets that are likely to contain conventional explosives

A method to remotely identify vehicles or other targets that might be harboring conventional explosives is described. The method utilizes multiple responses from a target that is interrogated by gamma-ray and neutron pulses and employs a template-matching procedure that reduces the collected information into a figure-of-merit. The template-matching procedure seeks to identify suspect targets based on deviations between a response vector obtained from a target under scrutiny and templates from a library; the templates are characteristic of targets with known cargoes. The methodology is illustrated with simulated data and the results of preliminary experiments on simplified targets are presented.