Business of Surveillance
By Jeffrey Kelley, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
May 11–FREDERICKSBURG — Next time you stroll down the street, smile pretty.
That fire hydrant might be watching you.
John McQuiddy and his team create sensors that can be hidden in a variety of fake objects, including rocks, vegetation, parking lot tire-stops and even fire hydrants.
The technology, though, is more likely to be placed in a war zone than in the suburbs.
McQ Inc. develops sensors and surveillance systems that have a range of uses, from observing road and weather conditions to detecting drug runners or intruders.
The devices — known as Unattended Ground Sensors, or UGS — are widely used on battlefields to see “if the bad guys are heading toward the good guys,” said McQuiddy, the firm’s president. He founded the company in 1985 after leaving a research and development job at the Pentagon.
McQ’s 50 employees are actively developing sensors that could be used to protect the nearly 6,000 miles of the country’s international borders.
Most of sensors made at Fredericksburg-based McQ are about the size of a shoebox.
Crash-proof equipment can be dropped from aircraft without a parachute into dangerous territory. On the ground, the device opens and performs its duty, the battery lasting from six months to four years.
“If you’re a vehicle or person, if you walk or drive by them, you’re going to get detected,” said McQuiddy, 65. The sensors use infrared, seismic, acoustic and magnetic technology to scout the area. “You’re going to get nailed at least four different ways.”
The unattended ground sensor industry is a niche market, said Jay Johnson, a business development director for ground systems at Textron Systems Corp., a Massachusetts-based developer of sensors.
Roughly a dozen U.S. firms, including McQ and Textron, develop the technology.
Sensor use is traced to Operation Igloo White in the Vietnam War, which used electronics to target North Vietnamese, track their locations and bomb the enemy.
“The old generation of sensors do one thing: alert somebody that something is there,” Johnson said. The failure rate of older sensors — even from just a few years ago — was high, McQuiddy said. Newer ground sensors are more reliable, and are built not only to detect, but to track and identify subjects.
McQ sensors, for example, can recognize and identify sounds, discerning a car or animal or gunshot.
The data is sent to satellites and can be viewed on an Internet-connected computer from anywhere in the world — meaning devices in an overseas battlefield can be seen from a base inside the United States.
Defense Department contracts pay the bills at McQ.
The business is providing the Air Force with satellite-linked remote weather systems for special forces operations. The Army recently bought 400 of McQ’s OmniSense products to use overseas to detect intruders. The images are clear enough to distinguish the make and model of vehicles.
The company’s newest product, iScout, is a cell-phone-size disposable sensor that can be tossed in areas cleared by military forces to detect whether the enemy returns.
“Some of these are going into extremely hazardous sites,” McQuiddy said. “We don’t have to have soldiers out there at risk.”
The Department of Homeland Security this year called on large companies to bid on its Secure Border Initiative, which aims to control illegal immigration into the U.S. and protect its international borders from terrorism.
Reston-based government business research firm Input Inc. anticipates that the project will exceed $2 billion in information technology spending, according to a report released last month. Aside from sensors and surveillance, many technologies are needed to protect and monitor borders, the group said.
Mentioned as possible bidders on the federal contract are Boeing Co., Ericsson, Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co., Input said.
At least 20 product and service areas could be subcontracted to smaller firms such as McQ. The Secure Border Initiative has “a role for tens, if not hundreds, of companies,” Input said.
The challenge for McQ is not just to make a product that stands out above the competition.
“As a small company you have to keep proving yourself,” McQuiddy said. “There’s no concrete evidence that you can do the complex jobs you say you can.”
But the truth, McQuiddy said chuckling, “is we’re blowing away all the big guys.”
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