Army tells industry to be ready for upcoming solicitation to detect chemical residue in fingerprints
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md., 13 Feb. 2014. U.S. Army researchers are notifying industry to be ready for a formal solicitation later this month to develop a security system able to detect traces of explosives, poisons, or other chemical materials left behind from a person's hands.
The biometric system is intended to detect trace chemicals in latent fingerprints and hand prints found at scenes of interest; It will not require the person whose hands are being analyzed to be present.
Officials of the Army Contracting Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground Edgewood Division (ACC-APG ED) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., has issued a presolicitation (W911SR14R0003) for the Chemical Fingerprint Identification System (CFIS), which seeks to identify chemical traces contained in fingerprints and hand prints lifted from suspicious areas.
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Army researchers say a formal solicitation for the CFIS program will be issued on 24 Feb. 2014, and companies interested in bidding must respond no later than 8 April 2014. The presolicitation was issued on behalf of the Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC).
The upcoming solicitation will be to procure prototypes for the CFIS, with options to build several more prototypes for field testing. Field prototypes should be able to perform complete chemical analysis of fingerprints and hand prints in less than 20 minutes.
The goal is to detect, identify, and warn security and military personnel of the presence of potentially illicit or dangerous materials from a sample or direct fingerprint or hand print.
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Army researchers will carry out the CFIS contract in two phases. Officials say they plan to award as many as two contract awards for the first phase, which will give contractors six months to design a functional man-portable CFIS prototype. The second phase will give vendors one year to build two identical CFIS units.
The CFIS unit should be able to identify trace levels of exogenous materials contained within fingerprints, partial-prints, or palm prints. The system must be able not only to capture a bright-field photograph of the entire examined sample at a resolution of at least 1,000 dots per inch, but also to locate, detect, and identify exogenous materials found within the minutiae and ridges of a fingerprint sample.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) must have the capability to collect fingerprints, non-invasively and non-destructively, from potential target materials, and identify chemical materials that may be present.
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The CFIS system should be able to link the fingerprint sample directly to the individual and detect possible threat-related materials found on the person's residual biometric, Army researchers say.
Email questions or concerns to the Army's William Mebane at [email protected].
More information is online at https://www.fbo.gov/notices/27d47297136afa928a3d752f548007c1.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
