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New Frontiers Gathering
Intelligence and performing Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) has
always been a critical success factor to any mission or campaign. Today
technology is helping us getting a tremendous advantage in situational
awareness. The proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles and systems
(UAV and UAS) the past decade is unparalleled.
In military operations, this information advantage is critical to mission efficiency and safety – for own troops as well as civilians and non-combatants. Many of the capabilities developed in this area is getting a strong foothold in various civilian applications, such as law enforcement, border patrol, coast guard, forestry/agriculture, research, environmental protection, civil security and yet many areas.  Schiebel Camcopter . Copyright and courtesy of Schiebel Corporation
Huge efforts and investments have been made in the areas of development of the airframes, including remote piloting and operations. By the same token, significant investments have been, and are being made, in the sensors they are carrying EO/IR sensors, laser designators, LIDAR, NIR/SWIR, SAR and GPR and other emerging sensor technologies provides extensive information on most facets of the observed terrain. Sensor development will also see mre integration (Multi-Sensor Payloads) and further miniaturization. In terms of Full Motion Video (FMV), we are likely to see increased use of Higoh Definition video (HD-video). Bringing down (or sometimes up) this amount of sensor data also push the envelope for reliable, robust, secure, interoperable and high bandwidth data links (such as Tactical Common Data Link, TCDL) and SATCOM. “ However, with these achievements come new challenges. Here are few examples: The sheer volume of sensor data creates huge challenges in itself; in almost all steps, such as available data link bandwith, data storage … read more “ Building up aerial ISR assets is a delicate trade-off of fundamental laws of physics. Let us start with two of them: Optics. Collecting image information with best possible granularity and resolution, a bigger lens simply allows for more photons to be detected, building up your visual representation. Momentum… read more
“ At Imint, we a bit provocatively say that among all development of new sensors, their carriers and carrier links, the final destination of all this data is somewhat neglected – the human eye, and our vision and perception system. At the end of the days, the vehicles with the cameras are up there for the purpose of providing us clear, actionable information. … read more |
