Lidar detection of biological aerosols

This paper reports the results of a system analysis of the performance of a helicopter-based backscatter lidar system for long-range stand-off detection of clouds of biological warfare (BW) agents. With models we developed, we calculated the dispersion, transport, and detectability of a BW agent line-source (`crop-duster'-like) cloud as a function of elapsed time in an employment scenario. For a given BW attack, we calculated the time of first detection, determined the warning time, and from that, estimated the number of troops saved from exposure.