Newark, NJ, June 11, 2004--New Jersey governor James McGreevey has designated the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) as the state's homeland-security technology-systems center. NJIT is to develop prototypes of integrated homeland-security systems for testing, demonstration and training, including huge imager-equipped airships for border surveillance and terahertz spectroscopic systems to detect explosives and other hazards.
The NJIT center will focus on areas already identified by the federal government as vital to national security: intelligence and warning, border and transportation security; protecting critical infrastructure and key assets, emergency preparedness, and response and defending against catastrophic threats and domestic counterterrorism.
In collaboration with the state, NJIT will draw on the resources of state agencies, New Jersey colleges and universities, including Rutgers University-Newark and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey among others, and military installations and private-sector firms engaged in relevant technology development programs.
The center is not designed to conduct basic research, but its activities should serve to sharpen the focus of research efforts in the state's universities, military bases, and private-sector labs that are working on homeland-security technologies. NJIT is engaged in a number of projects that will feed into the center's test bed.
A team of professors at NJIT is exploring the use of terahertz electromagnetic radiation to detect and identify explosives and biological agents by means of a spectroscope. Terahertz technology is an attractive method of detection because of its ability to detect the composition, size and shape of materials through the characteristic transmission or reflectivity spectra in the terahertz range. In essence, these materials appear as different "colors" to the terahertz radiation. Explosives and biological agents can be detected even if concealed in clothing, sealed packages or suitcases, because terahertz radiation is transmitted through plastics, clothing, luggage, paper and nonmetallic walls.
NJIT is partnering with StratCom International, a company headed by Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, USAF-Retired, who directed both the U.S.'s Space Shuttle program and the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative. StratCom International, along with NJIT, is developing stratospheric airships for homeland security and telecommunications. The unmanned, stationary platforms, intended to hover 12 miles above the ground, will be 25 times the size of Goodyear blimps. The airships will be equipped with sensing and imaging devices to provide surveillance coverage over a surface area of 500,000 square miles. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has recommended the stationing of 10 airships to securely cover all U.S. continental borders.