The U.S. Air Force has recently released this photo which shows an MQ-9 Reaper fitted with twin pods containing the Gorgon Stare system at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, prior to take off on March 20th.
Hosted and flown on General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, Gorgon Stare includes the USAF’s only operational day/night persistent wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) capability.
This latest generation of the Gorgon Stare system was deployed to the Afghanistan theatre early in 2014 and has achieved initial operations capability (IOC). This fully upgraded SNC Gorgon Stare system simultaneously provides a four-fold increase in area coverage with a two-fold improvement in resolution compared to its predecessor.
The system features two state-of-the-art imaging sensor turrets—an electro-optical (EO) sensor derived from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) ARGUS technology and manufactured by BAE Systems, and an infrared (IR) sensor integrating the largest IR arrays available manufactured by Exelis.
Photo: US Air Force
Source: Press Release