With increasing terrorist activities and confrontational situation between different nations, air surveillance has become one of the most important aspects for defense forces and security agencies. To guard their borders from intrusion of terrorists and opposite forces Raytheon and DARPA, the Pentagon’s research wing is all set for its new Project ISIS, a new radar system of a gigantic unmanned airship featuring superior surveillance potentials and better 360-degree threat detection, which possibly will replace the flat-panel radar antennas that usually are placed in an aircraft’s snout.
The airship will measure about 164 to 328 yards in length (ever largest airborne radar antenna) with the capacity to track everything from above 65,000 ft. over the combat zones and be controlled remotely from the ground.
Apart from other things the unmanned radar airship is expected use top-mounted solar cells and low-speed electric propellers to stay in the air for a longer duration (about one year) at such soaring height. There isn’t much information of the estimated cost of the project but the ISIS technology probably will debut in 2009.
Project ISIS certainly is a step forward in the air surveillance that is going to help the surveillance agencies in a huge way and definitely will revolutionize the defensive measures in future.
Via: popularmechanics
