DoDBuzz: Many Headed Dragon Heads to Af-Pak

[unhappycamper]

Many Headed Dragon Heads to AfPak
By Colin Clark Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 10:56 am
Posted in Air, International, Policy

Just in time for the spring offen­sives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Air Force should deliver the mar­velously named Gorgon Stare sensor.

The first three Gorgon Stare pods, mounted on Reaper MQ-​​9s, will make to Afghanistan around March or April, LT. Gen. David Deptula told reporters this morn­ing. Gorgon Stare uses five electro-​​optical and four infrared cam­eras to take pic­tures from dif­fer­ent angles. Those are put together to build a larger pic­ture. That pro­vides more detail and more flex­i­bil­ity than the cur­rent cam­eras, but per­haps its biggest advan­tage will be the abil­ity to pro­vide 10 video images to 10 dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors at the same time.

The next set of six Gorgon Stare pods will pro­vide up to 30 feeds to 30 dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors, said Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance. Those should be ready by September or October. Finally, the third tranche of pods will pro­vide a whop­ping 65 image feeds to the same num­ber of oper­a­tors. “We are vastly increas­ing the capa­bil­ity of our sys­tems with­out increas­ing the num­ber of plat­forms,” Deptula said.

Deptula said that Gorgon Stare was a chief rea­son the Air Force decided to buy more Reapers instead of Predators. Reapers can carry the new sen­sors and the good old Predator can’t.

Looking much far­ther down the road, Deptula said the Air Force wants to turn its long range strike option into a an ISR plat­form, as much as an indus­trial age bomber designed prin­ci­pally to find, fix and deliver kinet­ics to a tar­get. He called it an ISR strike plat­form, adding that the sys­tem could be manned or unmanned depend­ing on mis­sion and need. This was a key part of the new look the ser­vice is tak­ing at the plat­form after Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it very clear a few months ago that he did not think the bomber — or what­ever we’re going to call it — was ready for prime time.


Rest of article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/12/16/many-headed-dragon-heads-to-af-pak/?wh=wh