| Gorgon Stare | |
|---|---|
| Role | Reconnaissance aircraft sensor |
| National origin | United States |
| Manufacturer | Sierra Nevada Corporation |
| Designer | DARPA |
| First flight | date unknown |
| Introduction | flown under a MQ-9 Reaper |
| Status | 10 planned delivery |
| Primary user | United States Air Force |
| Number built | 1 |
| Unit cost | $15 million |
Gorgon Stare is the name given to a new video capture technology developed by the United States military. It is a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone.[1] The US Air Force calls it wide-area surveillance sensor system".[2]
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The system is capable of capturing video of an entire city, can then be analyzed by humans or an artificial intelligence, such as the Mind's Eye project being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Gorgon Stare needs to utilize a system of tagging and metadata to be fully effective.[3][4][5] The Air Force plans to deliver one system in 2011, another in 2012, and a third in 2014, though they will not enter service until accepted by the commander in the theatre of operations.[6] Gorgon Stare has been under development for more than two years and it is designed to down load to 65 different images to a variety of military users for analysis; this is what is refers to as “wide-area surveillance.”[7]
Gorgon Stare is being developed and tested on the MQ-9 Reaper at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. with the 53rd Wing. These sensors pods have been in development since 2009 by the Air Force’s Big Safari group and Sierra Nevada Corp.[8]
In January 2011, it was announced that the program wasn't performing to expectations, and included faults such as "a large black triangle moving throughout the image," due to failure to combine the images taken by the multiple cameras, inferior image quality compared to older systems, a problematic night-vision system, inability to track people on the surface, and delays of up to eighteen seconds in sending data to the ground.[6] In response, the Air Force said that several of the flaws had been fixed since the report detailing the issues had been written, that the system was never designed to offer high-resolution imagery over a wide area, and that in some areas the testing was "not sufficiently constructed to objectively evaluate the capabilities of the system," according to an anonymous source involved with the program.[9]
Development costs are in the $15 million range. This sensor will photograh an area with a four-kilometer radius underneath the MQ-9 Reaper. The Reaper can fly both day and night operations from 12 angles; as reported by Robert Marlin, a technical adviser for the Air Force.[10]
The Eglin AFB test revealed numerous problems, one such problem was a faulty coordinate grid for the chipped-out imagery. Another problem was a floating black triangle in the scenes. A third problem was an incompatibility with the handheld Rover 5 computers.[8]
Phase two will integrate processes of tracking algorithms from the ARGUS-IS system. Argus is a system of tools developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.[2]
Lt. Gen. Craig Koziol, the director of the ISR Task Force, reported in a news conference that Gorgon Stare is planned to be deployed in December 2011.[8]
Gorgon (such as Medusa) is a terrifying monster from Greek mythology with living snakes for hair. The reference is presumably to the multiple eyes (multiple cameras) and the danger it posed to gaze upon a Gorgon.
A similar system is planned to be installed on the Blue Devil blimp, a spy blimp developed for the US Air Force.[11]
In 2006, another similar wide-area surveillance sensor, the Constant Hawk, is being tested by the US Army. Also, in 2007, the Marine Corps tested an upgrade of the Constant Hawk, called Angel Fire. Both of these sensors were mounted under aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.[10]