1. Apparatus for determining the performance of a hyperspectral sensing system comprising: means for receiving various user-supplied data including target and background spectral data; means for receiving atmospheric data; means for receiving hyperspectral sensor data; means for said converting selected target and background spectral data to spectral templates; means for computing a sensor noise covariance for a predetermined sensor; means for computing the template strength covariance for said sensor noise covariance and said spectral templates; and means for computing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from said template strength covariance.