A high-tech firm based in Ashland has been awarded $18 million in contracts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to use its technology to detect unexploded ordinances on old military bases in the United States.

Sky Research, Inc. received the first $9 million contract on Thursday, followed by another on Friday, company spokesman John Steinbergs said.

Each contract allows the Corps to assign the firm up to $9 million worth of work, he said.

"We call the work 'environmental remediation,' but it is basically clean-up work at old military munition sites — old bombing ranges, things like that," he explained, noting most are World War II-era ranges used for bombing and artillery practice.

The firm, whose operations headquarters is in Denver with offices in Boston and Vancouver, B.C., has about 100 employees.

In partnership with the Corps, Sky Research has developed a process known as wide area assessment (WAA) by employing advanced geophysical, aviation, engineering and remote sensing technologies to detect the unexploded ordinances, he said.

"We use high airborne sensors to cover a vast amount of acreage in a day — thousands of acres," he said. "We are looking for historical evidence of munitions activities."

The firm uses light detection and ranging technology (LIDAR) which uses a laser beam fired from the aircraft to map the landscape below. Measuring the beam after it bounces back to the aircraft allows for precise measurement of the land below, he said.

"We can take a very large site, say 100 square miles, cover it with a high airborne sensor, looking for indications of where munitions activities took place," he said. "That would include a crater, old roads leading to a spot in the middle of nowhere."

They use that data to zero in on areas where munitions would likely be located, eliminating areas where there is no evidence of ordinances having been exploded, he said. Basically, LIDAR allows them to look past the vegetation, he said.

"After we narrow down the big sites into more manageable pieces, we then use low airborne sensors," he said.

That entails using a helicopter drone flying about three meters above the ground while carrying a device capable of detecting ferrous metal, he said.

"This system can cover hundreds of acres a day," he said. "It allows us to see the density of problem areas and locate positions. Once we locate them, we do a ground system search."

The latter include devices such as metal detectors, he said.

"That pinpoints the ordinance so we can clean it up," he said.

The firm's founders, Sky — who goes by only one name — and Anne Sky, both veteran pilots, started the firm in Kerby, a small community in the Illinois Valley about 25 miles south of Grants Pass. It has been based in Ashland since the mid-1990s.

In addition to detecting ordinance at active as well as former military sites, the company has provided mapping services for NASA and the U.S. Army.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.