Air Force Readies for the Gorgon StareNovember 05, 2009
 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UVAs) are the biggest advance in military technology in a generation. Now, their importance is about to skyrocket even higher as the Pentagon prepares to bulk up their surveillance capabilities beginning as early as 2010, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Current models have a surveillance camera that allows them to watch a single home or car, but the upcoming models will add multiple video feeds that can watch everything within a 1.5 square mile area. That capability is set to double the following year to three square miles. The advanced models will go from having 12 video feeds to eventually as many as 65. "Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," a senior military official told the Times. "The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary." The new video surveillance technology, called the Gorgon Stare after the mythological creature whose gaze turns people to stone, compiles all the images into a mosaic that shows the entire territory being watched. The article notes that this will allow the Pentagon to "keep watch on a midsized city or village -- turning the [UVAs] into a kind of heavily armed traffic camera." The technology will allow the Pentagon to literally follow the movement of several people as they make their way around far-flung parts of a city. And weeks' worth of this video will be stored on servers to allow analysts to track back in time the movement of people and vehicles, according the article. "It is not just video resolution, it is not just signals, it is not just access to analysts," a Defense official told the Times. "What has really evolved is the fact we can integrate a variety of information and analyze it in real time." The number of video feeds collected will expand exponentially from 38 today to about 3,000 by 2013 as the number of drones flying for the Air Force continues to rise. |
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