Sandia National Laboratories staged a two-week field exercise at Coyote Canyon, New Mexico, in roughly one month of preparation time — a setup that would normally take about six months — to test whether rapidly deployable security technologies can work as a single integrated system in rugged, remote terrain.

The exercise, led by Sandia for the military's Root Integration of Tools project, combined drones, ground sensors, radar, high-definition cameras, communication networks and Sandia-designed portable security systems. The central technical question was not whether individual sensors perform. It was whether data from all of them can move through a portable system fast enough, under constrained bandwidth, to support decisions in the field.

Jeff Hoaglund, a technical project lead for systems engineering research and development at Sandia, framed the test philosophy plainly: "Sandia has decades of experience doing physical protection system design and evaluation. We have a very specific process that is systems-performance based."

Why the military came to Sandia

Military interest grew out of Sandia's border security work and its role managing the Physical Security Center of Excellence for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Defense Nuclear Security. Hoaglund briefed the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, where the discussion focused on how to test new security technologies before deployment to operational environments — including the U.S.-Mexico border.

"They looked at Sandia's test and evaluation process. It's very regimented. We test everything," Hoaglund said. "We look at the systems approach — how all the different models interface and their interdependencies. If you try to improve one thing, how does that carry through the system?"

The Labs were initially asked for guidance and subject matter expertise on testing, then invited to host and lead the exercise itself. Coyote Canyon offered terrain the military wanted replicated: mountains, steep slopes and open areas.

What was actually tested?

Two Sandia-developed platforms carried the exercise:

• PIDS, the portable intrusion detection system: a trailer-based platform designed for NNSA to fill gaps in fixed-site perimeter security. PIDS has completed three real-world deployments within NNSA. It runs on solar, generator and battery power, and can be airlifted by helicopter or towed behind a small vehicle.
• CARBON, a wireless communications management system originally built to augment fixed communication infrastructure at Department of Energy facilities. Here it formed the backbone of the exercise's communications structure.

The key architectural test was whether PIDS could serve as a communication hub for multiple sensor platforms at once, feeding a network-type architecture back to a command-and-control hub at Coyote Canyon.

"Picture a square. If one of those lines goes down, everything is hardwired, so all those sensors go down," Hoaglund said, describing the fixed-site gap PIDS fills. "The trailer is designed to fill the gap in the perimeter intrusion detection system that's gone down."

In one scenario, the team flew a drone over ground surveillance radar to test detection, data capture and transmission through the communications architecture under limited bandwidth. The team confirmed the communications system worked well in the environment, even though CARBON was not originally designed for that kind of deployment.

Hoaglund placed the test conditions in operational context: "We put this in a location similar to what the U.S. Border Patrol or the military might see in an operational environment, where they have to use communication retransmission sites to communicate over high ground or mountainous terrain."

What are the limits of the results?

Sandia reports that all exercise objectives were met. The release does not quantify detection ranges, bandwidth figures or false-alarm rates, so program managers reading the results should treat them as system-integration validation rather than measured performance specifications. The strongest measured claim available is operational maturity: PIDS has already proven suitability and operation across three real NNSA deployments before this exercise.

The biggest constraint was schedule, not technology. Sandia received about a month's notice to lead an exercise that would normally require six months of setup. Hoaglund credited Sandia staff for the turnaround and acknowledged Kirtland Air Force Base for collaborating on approvals.

Where the program goes next

The exercise surfaced one clear engineering lesson: process data at the sensor, not at the network.

"Do data processing at the sensor level," Hoaglund said. "For constant situational awareness, that data processing needs to be done out at the sensor. You don't have the bandwidth to support all those feeds."

That lesson is shaping the next phase of the work, which includes adding artificial intelligence to filter data before transmission.

"We're looking at how we can use artificial intelligence to reduce the data, pick out what's pertinent and then send that information," Hoaglund said. "AI can help process information for the human, and then the human can decide what to do. It speeds up the decision timeline."

For R&D managers tracking deployable security portfolios, the exercise signals that Sandia's portable platforms — validated at NNSA sites and now in mountainous field conditions — are moving toward edge-processing architectures as the next investment area.