New Era of Surveillance Capable of Tracking 6-inch Objects in 25 Square Mile Area (VIDEO)

ForexTV NewsDesk   |  January 29 2013 12:17 EST

ForexTV.com (New York) by Kyle Henry

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been developing a new era of surveillance technology called Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance (ARGUS) (( . ARGUS is placed inside a pod, which is attached to a UAV and can provide a visual of 25 square miles. With a resolution of over 1.8 billion pixels, it is the world’s highest resolution camera.  

ARGUS gives the equivalent of having up to 100 predator drones looking at an area the size of a medium-sized city at once. Each section in the field of view can be opened up in a separate window to show more details of a smaller area, up to 65 windows can be opened at the same time.

Video from ARGUS taken from over 18,000 feet in the air can be enhanced to show objects as small as 6 inches on the ground. Any moving object in its field of view is immediately recognized and marked with a colored box, tracking that object.

ARGUS streams live to the ground; it also stores everything that it sees recording over a million terabytes of data per day, which is equivalent to 5000 hours of high definition footage. This gives the capability of not only watching what is happening on the ground currently, but also at any point in time in the past that has been recorded.

Argus is designed using materials that can be found in most people’s pocket. If you were to take apart a camera phone, and strip down the camera you would find an imaging chip. Then if you took 368 of those imaging chips and put them together you would have ARGUS.

Although plans of use in the field are classified, DARPA would like ARGUS to be deployed in areas of the Middle East 24 hours a day, giving the government full access to what is happening at all times. This level of surveillance is made possible by the mounting of ARGUS onto drones, as it is impossible to maintain 24 hour posts with manned aircrafts.

The U.S. Army, along with Boeing, has developed and is preparing to deploy a new unmanned aircraft called the “Hummingbird.” It’s is a VTOL-UAS (vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial system). Three of them are being deployed to Afghanistan for a full year to survey and spy on Afghanistan from an altitude of 20,000 feet. A development craft called the “Solar Eagle” will have the capability to remain in the air for years at a time, and will provide even further opportunities for the use of ARGUS.

Forex research by ForexTV.com