Skip to main content

A new type drone coming somewhere near you sometime soon

As if the present-day drones weren't bad enough - and have already caused much untold damage - this piece from truthdig reports on the latest and even more invasive drones coming to somewhere near you sometime soon.

"The PBS show “NOVA” is funded in part by arch-conservative David Koch and defense companies like Lockheed Martin. It often smacks of TED-talk greasiness and rarely criticizes its subjects. But the series’ latest installment on unmanned aerial vehicles, “Rise of the Drones”, appears to contain new, genuinely valuable revelations.

Those unfamiliar with UAVs will find a concise summary of the current, publicly known state of play as well as a brief history of their development. What appears to be new are the details of a panoramic camera called Argus developed by Britain-based BAE Systems, the third-largest defense contractor in the world.

“Today we’ve developed sensors that can watch, with an all-seeing eye, and see an area about the size of a small city. All at one time,” said David Deptula, a lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force.

At 1.8 billion pixels, Argus is the world’s highest-resolution camera. For comparison, a quick Google search suggests that the next highest-resolution camera, available to professionals, is a Swedish-made Hasselblad, which clocks in at 200 million pixels.

The cameras currently mounted on armed predator drones are limited. Although operators can zoom in on precise locations, the act is like looking through a soda straw. The effect is that operators often have a poor sense of what is going on outside their narrow field of vision, even at altitudes of 20,000 feet.

Argus makes the predator camera obsolete. “Also known as ‘Wide Area Persistent Stare,’ Argus is the equivalent of having up to 100 predators look at an area the size of a medium-sized city at once,” “NOVA” says. This is done by stitching together streams captured by a curved mosaic of 368 lens chips into one fluid video. Standing at a monitor, an operator can zoom in on specific areas anywhere within the image, opening up to 65 windows that contain magnified views while maintaining the larger context.

From an altitude of 17,500 feet, Argus can see an object 6 inches off the ground, and automatically identifies everything that moves. Its recordings can be stored at a capacity equivalent to 5,000 hours of high-definition footage and are instantly retrievable at every level of magnification.

“NOVA” indicates these cameras could one day be mounted on a fleet of solar-powered craft capable of staying aloft for five years at a time. “We would like Argus to be over the same area 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” BAE designer Yannis Antoniadis said.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the
Post a Comment
Read more

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t
Post a Comment
Read more

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as
Post a Comment
Read more