Mar 12 2015
Logos Technologies successfully demonstrated its new, lightweight Simera wide-area sensor aboard an aerostat, or tethered blimp, at TCOM’s Persistent Surveillance Solutions Center of Excellence in Elizabeth City, N.C.
The demonstration, which took place in February and followed on the heels of field tests in late January, proved the maturity of the Simera airborne wide area motion imagery (WAMI) system for both military and civilian customers.
“Simera was able to locate and track targets of interest over a city-sized area in real time,” says John Marion, president of Logos Technologies, LLC, “and its TiVo-like recording function allowed operators to analyze activity captured within Simera’s 360-degree field of view.”
Simera is based on Kestrel, the only aerostat-based WAMI sensor used on the battlefield. Also developed by Logos, Kestrel has been deployed at forward operating bases in Afghanistan since 2011, providing troops with round-the-clock protection against IED attacks.
Weighing only 40lbs (18 kg), Simera can be employed on a wider variety of platforms than Kestrel, including fast-to-deploy tactical aerostats. In addition, it is not subject to the same export restrictions.
“It’s the smallest aerostat-mounted WAMI system with this level of capability being marketed and sold abroad,” Marion notes.
Logos has a long history developing WAMI sensors. It pioneered the first such system for manned aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan and has since been miniaturizing its WAMI sensors for use on both tactical aerostats and small unmanned aircraft.
Aerostat manufacturer TCOM opened its Center of Excellence last year in order to provide government and private industry a site where they could conduct integration testing for platforms, payloads and data processing, exploitation and exploitation technologies.
Source: https://www.logostech.net/