AFRL Commander's Challenge 2009 Published March 25, 2010 By Beverley Thompson Sensors WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The Air Force Research Laboratory Commander's Challenge 2009 concluded with the announcement that Team Wright-Patterson had won the year's event, which hinged on developing a system to monitor mountain passes--the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example--for insurgent activity. Each of the two competing teams, Team Kirtland and Team Wright-Patterson, consisted of junior officers and civilians (i.e., individuals having less than 5 years of federal service) coming together for an intense 6-month effort to analyze, design, build, and test the specified technology. Among the aspects considered by the teams in addressing their various obstacles were the following considerations: Identification of chokepoints and critical zones in high-altitude, mountainous regions Detection of moving and stationary vehicles and dismounts Access to information of sufficient quality to distinguish behavior Dissemination of data to remote operations station Covertness (avoidance/minimization of detection during operation) Affordability (cost) Ease of use, minimal operator load Team Wright-Patt combined off-the-shelf and custom, in-house-developed technologies--networked via multiple communication paths--to assemble a self-forming, self-healing topology. The team's resultant capabilities included a thermal line scanning imager; radio frequency "trip wires"; and a unique, "Bad Guy Matrix" for categorizing potential insurgents. All sensor information displayed in a layered sensing application that the team was able to adapt for its purposes based on work already in progress within AFRL.