A Direct Comparison Of Airborne And Ground Magnetometer Array Data Collected Over A Seeded Uxo Site

The airborne MTADS adjunct, a helicopter-mounted magnetometer array, was recently evaluated<br>in a demonstration on 1,685 acres of a live-fire range previously used for ground-fired projectiles at the<br>Badlands Bombing Range in South Dakota. Performance was evaluated by blind-seeding a ten-acre site<br>with inert 105-mm, 155-mm, and 8-in projectiles. The seeded test area, and an additional 100 acres of<br>the airborne survey area, were also surveyed using the vehicular MTADS magnetometer array. Based<br>upon the vehicular and airborne surveys, 26 inert projectiles, and an additional 9 HE-filled projectile<br>duds were recovered in this area. The airborne survey system detected all the projectiles identified in the<br>vehicular survey. These data provide a unique opportunity for both qualitative and quantitative<br>comparison of the performance of these systems. The two data sets differ with respect to survey altitude<br>above ground and data sample density. The effect of the altitude difference on the character of target<br>anomalies with respect to amplitude and width are immediately apparent. Relative production rates,<br>location accuracies, identification and classification capabilities of the two systems are compared.