The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate has completed a successful week-long field test of a wide area surveillance system aboard a tethered aerostat suspended 2,000 feet above the Arizona desert, according to the agency.
DHS used a Logos Technologies Kestrel day/night sensor mounted on a Raven Industries [RAVN] aerostat near Nogales, Ariz., to provide a city-sized view of an area to aid in the identification and apprehension of migrants illegally attempting to enter the United States. The aerostat was also equipped with an MX-15 long range electro-optic and infrared (EO/IR) imaging system supplied by L-3 Communications’ [LLL] Wescam unit that worked in tandem with the Kestrel sensor.
The Kestrel EO/IR system has very good resolution but when something of interest is found in an area, it may not be enough to identify the subject, John Appleby, program manager with the DHS S&T Borders and Maritime Security division, tells TR2. That’s where the MX-15 system comes in to provide a higher resolution close-up that enables identification of the item of interest, he says.
DHS said that the sensor platform, which was operated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, helped identify more than 100 attempted illegal entries and other illegal activities into the country.
“With the technology showcased here, we were able to see activities happening in different parts of the city at the same time,” Appleby said in a statement as part of a DHS release on the recent field test. In addition to providing immediate situational awareness, the system demonstration showed the ability to use the imagery for forensic analysis, enabling authorities to rewind the sensor imagery and reconstruct activity of past events that occurred within the field of view, he says.
“That forensic capability is a huge key for us,” Appleby says.
For the field test the sensor technology was operated in different modes. In some cases, Border Patrol officers operated the sensor systems and monitored the imagery, slewing the spotter camera to the areas where they saw movement through the wide area imagery system. That enabled the operators to get a better working knowledge of the smaller camera and to see how it fit with the Kestrel sensor, Appleby says.
In other examples the wide area sensor cued the spotter sensor and with a push of a button the MX-15 camera would zoom in for a close-up of the particular item of interest, Appleby says.
The overall system did have a limited video analytics technology that provides a tracking capability although this technology has difficulty, when say a person walking alone meets up with a group of people and then leaves the group, Appleby says. The technology needs to be able to hold the track of the person after he leaves the group, he says.
This the automated features of the technology were only used “to a point” in order to have the operators do more of the work and become more familiar with how the overall system works, Appleby says. Longer term, this capability will be essential given the high data volumes, he adds.
The Border Patrol is looking at more wide area surveillance capabilities, Appleby says. This technology is “potentially highly valuable” to the Border Patrol, as it is very mature given its use within the U.S. armed forces and intelligence community but how it gets transitioned to use by DHS is important, he adds.
“This automated software and automated image analysis, automated analysis in general of the data, of large data volumes, is a key point and can be a showstopper for us,” Appleby says. “We have to find ways to do that. Now the military and intel folks are investing enormous amounts of money into that area too so there again we want to leverage their hardware and software systems and we want to leverage that new investment that’s coming on right now.”
While some in industry and Congress have pressed DHS to use more proven military technology to take advantage of systems that have already had their development paid for, DHS officials have pointed out that in many cases the military technology is either too expensive outright for them to purchase or requires too much in the way of manpower and other resources to operate to be affordable for their use.
Appleby points out that the recent demonstration was a good example of DHS leveraging technology that has been developed for military use. In March Logos Technologies said it had delivered its first two day/night Kestrel electro-optic/infrared systems to the U.S. Army to be deployed on aerostats in Afghanistan, replacing technology that is only able to operate during daylight.
Aerostat-based surveillance systems are a potential platform for DHS to conduct border security but it’s still too early to say if DHS will be in the “aerostat business,” Appleby says. More testing with aerostats has to be done and be compared with putting similar sensors on other airborne platforms such as fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, he says.
The aerostats are not stealthy but they still provide the potential for “high value in hot spots…where it can close doors and provide more situational awareness,” Appleby says. They also can be moved to another location in about a day, he adds.
RFP for Wide Area Surveillance
Appleby also says that S&T is developing a Request for Proposals for wide area airborne surveillance systems (WAASS) to continue the program. He expects proposals for fixed-wing aircraft equipped with WAASS and possibly aerostats and helicopters.
“The U.S. Border Patrol must adopt new technologies, rapidly identify cross border threats so resources can be deployed appropriately,” Leslie Lawson, agent in charge of the Border Patrol’s Nogales Station, said in a statement. “Integrating new technology into our mission is an essential part of managing risk on the border. The Border Patrol is open to new methods that will assist in leveraging our border enforcement efforts.”
In reviewing the WAASS, Appleby says he has to work closely with his customer, which is CBP, the agency that would ultimately be acquiring any systems for operational use.
“Those guys would be very closely concerned with all of the costs of ownership, obviously acquisition related costs, but also the staffing,” Appleby says. “When you have an aerostat platform you have a few people required to launch, recover and maintain the platform…Then you have people just to man the imager to be responding to the imagery in real time.”