Sierra Nevada (SNC) has joined hands with ITT Exelis to set up Vigilant Stare, a manned aircraft-based Wide-Area Airborne Persistent Surveillance (WAPS) system capability.
The strategic alliance is meant for offering advanced solutions in airborne wide-area surveillance on a fee-for-service basis.
The Vigilant Stare system will be hosted on a Twin Otter aircraft.
SNC said the Vigilant Stare system is derived from a U.S. Air Force system.
As part of the agreement, Vigilant Stare will provide infrared coverage of city-sized areas, providing real-time motion imagery directly to diversified users involved in domestic support missions.
Three products — the full field of regard; multiple sub-views of the full field of view and best-resolution tactical chip-outs — will be provided to users through an enterprise dissemination backend.
“This game-changing system will provide product in near real time for unprecedented, rapid exploitation and forensics analysis support. The entire mission data set is available post-mission for live, long-term archiving, discovery and additional exploitation,” said Dave Bullock, vice president for Persistent Surveillance Systems at Sierra Nevada Corporation.
The partnership between SNC and Exelis is expected to deliver Wide-Area Airborne Surveillance capabilities with multiple service options that help customers meet their mission needs on a more affordable and flexible basis.
“These solutions enable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data to be collected, processed and disseminated across multiple platforms for users. Our partnership with Sierra Nevada Corporation to build the Vigilant Stare system will provide a diverse set of customers with the flexibility and capabilities necessary to carry out their missions in today’s environment,” said S. Danny Rajan, director of Emerging and Airborne Offerings at ITT Exelis Geospatial Systems.
