City-wide imaging sensor flies on US drone
Logos Technologies' BlackKite pod can image a 16 square kilometre area at 12,000ft. (Photo: Logos Technologies)
Logos Technologies, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems of America, has seen its BlackKite IR wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) pod flown on a US Army UAS for the first time.
The pod, which can image, track and record hundreds of targets moving across an area the size of a city, featured in an experimental long-range detection and identification missions during the EDGE 23 demonstration event.
Held at Yuma proving ground in May, the pod flew on a Group 4 UAS serving as a surrogate platform for the US Army’s future Air-Launched Effects (ALE) drone.
Logos Technologies VP of business development Doug Rombough said: ‘We demonstrated how our lightweight BlackKite pod could be used in the long-range detection of enemy vehicles and air defence systems,
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‘And even though the Group 4 UAS was only meant to serve as a surrogate for ALE, we also showed how our platform-agnostic BlackKite pod could work with long-endurance Group 4 UAS.’
Weighing 17kg in the podded version, BlackKite can be mounted on planes, helicopters, and Group 3 (or larger) UAS.
At an altitude of 12,000ft, BlackKite can image a 16 square kilometre area.
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