The award comes after Arktis achieved DARPA’s ambitious performance goals. The company has announced that this contract will enable it to continue its steep trajectory and maintain development of its advanced range of detectors.
Arktis has already started to deploy the M1000 detectors which it has been developing for the SIGMA program. The Port of Antwerp’s new container terminal – Europe’s biggest in terms of capacity – is currently being equipped with a multitude of Arktis’ Radiation Portal Monitors that already include cutting edge Sigma-enabled technology.
Rico Chandra, CEO of Arktis Radiation Detectors commented, “In the US, the UK and other countries, we expect to see large procurements for systems similar to the ones we are now fielding in Antwerp. I am proud that with DARPA’s support we have been able to get this significant new technology into the field in record time.”
The new M1000 detectors developed by Arktis, are highly sensitive, extremely cost effective and feature the company’s own proprietary technology that leverages the use of natural helium as opposed to the scarce and expensive He-3 isotope used in many legacy systems. The funding provided by DARPA under this new contract will accelerate the company's plan to develop new applications for the core detector modules and make them available to a more extensive range of customers. A key feature of the new detectors is their flexible, modular, design allowing them to be easily integrated into new and refurbished Radiation Portal Monitors and used for various types of mobile detection and identification platforms. The new detectors can also be easily sized for various unattended monitoring scenarios.
The additional funding comes on the back of more good news for Arktis. The company recently announced that it had opened a US subsidiary, Arktis Detection Systems, Inc., in Arlington, VA.
About DARPA
For more than fifty years, The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has held to a singular and enduring mission: to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.
The genesis of that mission and of DARPA itself dates to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and a commitment by the United States that, from that time forward, it would be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprises.
Working with innovators inside and outside of government, DARPA has repeatedly delivered on that mission, transforming revolutionary concepts into reality while tackling some of the greatest technical challenges known to man. As a result, the agency can be credited for many icons of modern civilian society including the Internet, automated voice recognition and language translation, and Global Positioning System receivers small enough to embed in a myriad consumer devices.
DARPA explicitly reaches for transformational change instead of incremental advances. But it does not perform its engineering alchemy in isolation. Leveraging an innovation ecosystem that includes academic, corporate and governmental partners, DARPA is able to take advantage of special statutory hiring authorities and alternative contracting vehicles that allow the Agency to take quick advantage of opportunities to advance its mission.