Home > Physical Security (PS)
Physical Security (PS)
Mission: Identify and prioritize interagency physical security requirements to protect forces, vital equipment, and facilities against terrorist attacks, execute research and development projects that address those requirements, and transition successful prototypes into programs of record or into immediate field use to meet urgent operational needs.
The Physical Security (PS) subgroup identifies the physical security requirements of Federal, State and local agencies, both within the United States and abroad, and develops technologies to protect their personnel and property from terrorist attacks. The subgroup manages projects to develop prototype hardware, software, and systems for technical and operational evaluation by user agencies.
Focus Area Product Catalogs
The PS subgroup focus areas reflect the prioritized requirements of the physical protection community. During FY 2010, the PS Subgroup absorbed the Blast Effects and Mitigation Subgroup and realigned focus areas as follows:
Vulnerability Identification
Develop predictive analysis software and decision aids to identify vulnerabilities and/or determine preventive courses of action. Emphasize pre-event planning and assessment of emerging threats. Products
Threat Mitigation
Test and evaluate infrastructure components to investigate and characterize potential damage in order to identify mitigation strategies to protect against current and evolving threats. Components include but are not limited to: buildings, bridges, tunnels, utility systems, water supplies, and computer networks. Where components and threats require evaluation under unique circumstances, test protocols will be developed to ensure repeatable and consistent results. Emphasize explosives, gunfire, mortars, rockets, and shrapnel and debris effects. Mitigation strategies may include common test protocols, hardened infrastructure, improved design standards, retrofit techniques, and new design criteria. Products
Prototypes and Integrated Solutions
Develop technologies and techniques to survey and analyze facilities; improve situational awareness; detect, identify and locate advancing threats; control access to critical assets; and neutralize confirmed threats. Emphasize automatic alerting, expeditionary kits, and exportable variants. Integrate technologies into force protection solution packages that will improve the effectiveness of security systems, reduce manning requirements, and offer increased affordability and survivability of operators and responders.Products
CTTSO-wide Thrusts
PS Subgroup manages Working Groups that require multi-disciplinary solutions and the expertise of several Programs within CTTSO. Current thrusts include:
Homemade Explosives
Identify, prioritize, and execute research and development projects to satisfy interagency and international requirements that address the adaptive threat associated with homemade explosives. Emphasize characterization of homemade explosives to combat their use in terrorist activities. Coordinate requirements received from the Homemade Explosives Working Group (HMEWG) across appropriate CTTSO Programs.
Subterranean Operations
Develop capabilities to detect, locate, survey, and disrupt subterranean operations in semi-permissive and non-permissive environments to allow tactical forces to conduct operations and counter hostile and/or criminal networks. Coordinate requirements received from the Counter-Tunnel Operations Working Group (CTOWG) across appropriate CTTSO Programs.