The USAF is all set to roll-out a new UAS that carries not one, but nine full motion video cameras – enough to task an entire city:
The development of Gorgon Stare began about 18 months ago. It is based on the work of Air Force scientists who came up with the idea of stitching together views from multiple cameras shooting two frames per second at half-meter resolution. Currently full-motion video is shot at 30 frames per second from one camera mounted on a Predator or the larger Reaper drone. That makes for more fluid video, but also more difficulty in assembling frames quickly to get the wide-area view.
Technological advances now make it possible for a soldier on the ground to receive any portion of a panoramic view in real time, streamed to a portable device about the size of an iPad, Poss said. At the same time, nine other soldiers can get the same or a different view. The images will be stored so analysts can study them to determine, for instance, who planted an improvised bomb or what the patterns of life in a village are…
The Air Force is looking to mount wide-area surveillance cameras on airships that can stay aloft for up to two weeks.
“This is all cutting-edge technology that is being fielded in a short period of time,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who served as deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Seems to me that they’ve solved the “T” in the TPED chain: Tasking, Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination.
Not quite sure how they’re going to solve the important bits that follow after.
Am I the only guy here who immediately thought “Captain Holly Graf” when he read the words “Gorgon Stare”?
When I read the words ‘Captain Holly’ I immediately think of that bunny in the Owsla in Watership Down. Much more pleasant image.
Coming soon to a U.S. city near you…for test purposes, you understand. Such platforms would never be used against Americans by they own gubmint.
Actually, a good test would be along our southern border; controlled environment.
Exactly. Go ahead, tell yourself that this will not be used to “control civilian populations” by the usual suspects.
Then take a drink. You need one.
For an area like the Mexican border, bring it on….need something there to bring the human tide to rest….
As far as AFGHN goes, we need all the technology that we can apply to the problem as all regular effort on the ground is akin to trying to change tide with a teaspoon….
We will see how well it works once the “missile hits” increase based on using the info from Gorgon Stare….
Captain Holly Graf makes me think of Medusa….but that’s just me.
Exploitation will be the Great Big Problem. The raw intelligence product can be provided in enormous amounts. Turning it into actionable intelligence in a timely manner? That’s the hard part.
Information overload is, in some ways, worse than not enough. Finding a way to reliably extract what is important from a stream of data that makes trying to drink from a fire hose seem easy, is quite difficult. More warm bodies watching the screen can help, but don’t know if DoD can afford it. Automating it can be even more difficult than the budgetary problems caused by more warm bodies. I hope this works well for us.
Making the video available to all hands, and making it like Tivo will help with the exploiting. Each person can look for what they’re looking for, in real time or past tense. Post-mortems on ground movements, fact checking a Mullah, top cover always, etc. Pretty cool.
Everything is a double-edged sword. QM & Taxi1 are both right..
If I were in the Af, I’d like to give a try of surveilling the particular village I was in, while doing something provocative, like say, installing a fake camera at an obvious viewpoint.
I can understand how data processing would be a bear, but if I could proactively do the PED in TPED as a small unit commander, what’s the big problem?
When cockroaches seek food, it doesn’t take much processing to conclude that they’re bugs with a mission. I don’t have to watch the bedroom when the food is in the kitchen.