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Capabilities

Mag ISR

Magnetic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — detecting what other sensors cannot see.

The problem

What this capability is

Cameras and radar see surfaces. A magnetometer reads the field, which means it reads through soil, through water and through structure: anything ferrous distorts the local field whether or not it can be seen.

Mag ISR is the use of that fact as a sensing discipline. A survey line is flown or driven across an area and the magnetometer records a profile. A buried mass appears as a compact departure from the smooth regional gradient underneath it, and the work is in separating the two — the regional field changes slowly and is uninteresting; the anomaly is small, local, and the entire point.

Doing this from a small platform is the constraint that has kept magnetic sensing specialised. A sensitive magnetometer has traditionally been a heavy instrument with an operator attached to it. Chip-scale atomic magnetometers change the trade: a sensor that is small and low-power can be carried by the platform that was already going there, and several can be carried at once — which is what turns a single profile into a map.

A magnetometer traverse across a survey line, with the magnetic contours closing into a bullseye over a buried anomaly.
ReadoutA magnetometer traverse crossing a buried anomaly, the contours closing into a bullseye beneath the survey line. Drawing, not photograph.

Applications

Example applications

A small uncrewed aircraft flying low over open ground under flat overcast light, terrain filling most of the frame
Where it worksThe survey platform: low, slow, and close to the ground.Generated illustration · gpt-image-2

Applications are examples of what the capability enables, not products. Each one below is a system somebody already operates; the measurement is what would change about operating it.

Defense
Detection and classification of buried or submerged objects that give no optical or radar signature.

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