Logos Technologies Delivers Kestrel Wide Area Surveillance Systems To Army
Logos Technologies has delivered its first two day/night Kestrel wide-area persistent surveillance systems to the Army where they will be used on aerostats in Afghanistan, officials said.
The new, 150-pound, electro-optical/infrared Kestrel systems are the only 360-degree persistent surveillance system mounted on Persistent Threat Detection System (PTDS) aerostats. They can scan a city-sized area at once, 24/7, making it virtually impossible to sneak up on or into a protected area, and providing an extra layer of protection for troops. The units replace current technologies that can only operate during the day.
John Marion, director of persistent surveillance for Logos Technologies, said he’s been involved in persistent surveillance for more than a decade since his work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and systems have continued to evolve.
Kestrel is the most modern implementation of persistent surveillance, he said, for aerostats that typically fly at several thousand feet.
“DoD had a particular interest in the forward protection of bases, perimeter detection and this system can view an area of a few kilometers in 360-degrees,” Marion said.
Greg Poe, CEO of Logos Technologies, said: “Before, if you wanted night vision, you had to rely on cameras with a very narrow field of view. “These new Kestrel units provide our warfighters true wide-area persistent surveillance at night.”
When the Kestrel system detects a target within its field of view, it cues a high-powered, full motion video camera that can focus on the suspicious activity. Unlike other systems, Kestrel can also record every event that happens in a monitored area for up to 30 days.
“This offers the operator a powerful imagery-gathering tool,” said David Luber, Kestrel program manager for Logos Technologies. “With it, you can detect patterns of behavior over time, uncovering previously unidentified threats.”
Marion said while full motion video is common on unmanned aerial systems, it’s fundamentally different from a system like Kestrel.
Kestrel is optimal for aerostats; a different system, Constant Hawk, works on manned aircraft. Yet a different program works for small drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles and Logos Technologies’ LEAPS solution are circling and not really looking 360 degrees, he said, but have a narrower field of view. Helicopters are also narrow-view, having to choose to look at one area. Mast mounted systems don’t get the same view, though they are possible in some areas where aerostats might not be feasible.
“Each of the different applications has different constraints and requirements,” Marion said.
“We’re imaging many hundreds of millions of pixels” a second over a wide area, and imaging all of it, he said. The data is fed down a fiber optic tether to operators on the ground where the computing is done.
The Kestrel records all of the imagery, and the ground system displays windows that look at areas the operators define in advance.
If the operator doesn’t have a window open for that specific area, it can slew over to it in real time, go back in time to see what keyed the sensor, see the events that led up to the event and track what happened or where people went afterward. All the sensor data feeds into a database for immediate use or archive.
These capabilities “make a single operator much more effective,” Marion said.
“We’re really good at seeing large areas and finding things that moving,” he said. Kestrel has a medium resolution, detecting people and vehicles that are moving. While it can’t tell much about them, operators can cue a spotter or a different sensor to take a sharper look and see, for instance, if a person is carrying a gun, or if a vehicle is the one being sought or not.
The future is likely to see higher resolution sensors to provide better identifications. High-resolution views are a force multiplier, and would not be particularly difficult to do, Marion said. Just replace the cameras as new generation (cameras) are available, a relatively inexpensive way to improve the system.
Other future upgrades would be in continually improving automated tools so each analyst is much more effective and efficient. This also would reduce the footprint of forward-based soldiers. If Kestrel is made lighter, it could potentially go on other platforms. Miniaturization also can make it useful for other platforms, he said.
While Kestrel is an independent system, Logos Technologies has just finished the first step in certifying the software so it can be connected to a larger network, something the Army is vigorously working on. The next step will be to change some of the data configuration so it matches existing systems and then imagery can move around over the network, Marion said.
“There is room to grow,” Marion said. “We’re a pretty small, nimble team.”