The Increment II pods will differ from Increment I, offering twice the area coverage and double the resolution by using separate EO and IR sensor balls—one of each on individual pods—being built, respectively, by BAE Systems and ITT Defense, says Mike Meermans, vice president of strategic planning at Sierra Nevada. Increment II will produce increased coverage and better resolution by packing a large number of small cameras—perhaps hundreds—into each sensor ball, he notes. Images from the Increment II EO cameras will be in color rather than black-and-white as in Increment I. Sierra Nevada is also designing Increment II with an open architecture to permit additional sensors—perhaps a synthetic aperture radar, for example—to be added to the pods, with the data they gather integrated into the Gorgon Stare video image by the onboard computer processors.
A Gorgon Stare pod set weighs substantially less than a Reaper’s 3,000-lb. payload capacity, but an MQ-9 carrying Gorgon Stare will fly unarmed because of electrical power limitations and stay aloft at 20,000-25,000 ft. for only 14-15 hr., several hours less than an armed MQ-9. Endurance is affected by drag from the pods, Marlin says.
Deptula says Gorgon Stare “changes the dynamic in terms of measuring ISR sufficiency” and is one reason he and other Air Force leaders pushed for the service to stop buying Predators, which can’t carry Gorgon Stare, as of Fiscal 2009. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. makes the Predator and Reaper. USAF’s goal has been to increase the number of daily combat air patrols (CAPS) flown by Predators and Reapers to 50 by the end of Fiscal 2011, Deptula says, and to 65 by Fiscal 2013, which would provide a maximum of 65 full-motion video images streaming at any one time from the UAVs. Fifty Reapers equipped with Gorgon Stare’s Increment II version, however, could provide hundreds of streaming images simultaneously and five times that many after stored images are processed, Deptula says. That calculation calls for rethinking the practice of measuring ISR sufficiency by counting CAPS, he argues.
“We have to get people to stop thinking about input measures—the number of platforms that are flown—and start thinking about output measures, that is, the received output from the entire system,” Deptula says. Ground troops “don’t care how many CAPS are being flown. What they care about is, are they getting increased situational awareness by what’s being flown?”
The Air Force has 53 Reapers and plans to buy 329 in all. There is no official connection between the programs, but Gorgon Stare also could be carried on a future unmanned aircraft known as Magic, an acronym for Medium-Altitude Global ISR and Communications, being designed to fly for five days at 20,000 ft. with a 1,000-lb. payload. Magic is being developed by Aurora Flight Sciences under a $4.7-million contract awarded Sept. 15 by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Aurora will use its Orion Unmanned Aerial System as the airframe for Magic.
