Goodrich is to supply a short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensor for a US Air Force demonstration of a small recoverable unmanned air vehicle to be air launched from a Lockheed Martin AC-130 Spectre special-operations gunship to provide an off-board sensing capability and targeting support for General Atomics MQ-1 Predator UAVs.
The US company's Sensor Unlimited (SUI) team will supply the SWIR cameras under the USAF UAV Battlelab's Spectre Flight Inserted Detector Expendable for Reconnaissance (Finder) demonstration, planned for next year. The sensor will be integrated with a laser pointer into a gimballed payload for the US Naval Research Laboratory's Finder air-launched UAV.
The Finder small, 6.5h-endurance UAV was developed to be carried under the wing of a Predator UAV and released to descend to low altitudes to sample the atmosphere for chemical agents.
For the Spectre Finder demonstration, the AC-130 will carry two of the small pusher-propeller UAVs, which will be launched to fly closer to targets than is safe for the large gunship, then recovered on the ground.
Unlike the mid-wave and long-wave sensors normally used in thermal imagers, SWIR detects reflected rather than transmitted infrared energy and produces high-resolution images day or night, in any weather, enabling positive target identification, says Dr Martin Ettenberg, vice-president of the SUI team. The SWIR sensor will enable the AC-130 to tell whether a person is armed or unarmed, he says.
The SWIR payload will include a 640 x 512 indium gallium arsenide focal-plane array detector, dual field-of-view lens and a laser pointer. According to the original solicitation released in August, two flight demonstrations are planned, the latter involving an upgraded sensor payload with improved pixel array camera.Tests are to take place at Eglin AFB in Florida or Edwards AFB in California.
Source: Flight International
