Hood River, OR (PressExposure) July 07, 2011 -- Press Release
From: Hood Tech Corp, Vision Inc., Hood River, Oregon
Although big unmanned aircraft such as the Predator drone get most of the attention, it's the small guys that "...provide most of the route surveillance for convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, spy on hostile forces and provide critical information to warfighters in direct contact with hostile forces." So writes Daniel Goure for defpro.news at http://www.defpro.com/news/details/26099/?SID=f61d2d119e1324a7c5e5fc8c99362857
The article, titled "Small UAVs like Scan Eagle carry a tremendous workload", discusses UAVs like those carrying Hood Tech's AltiCam imaging systems manufactured in Hood River, Oregon (www.hoodtech.com). Working symbiotically, Hood Tech and its clients are united in their efforts to push today's technologies to their limits while simultaneously inventing the technologies that the Navy and Marine Corps will use tomorrow.
The article observes that one small UAV typically "flies with an electro-optical sensor." One variant of this UAV, employs a mid wavelength infrared imager to see at night and through obscurants. Experiments have been conducted flying this UAV with a miniature synthetic aperture radar, the first of its kind on a small UAV.
"The company that makes the UAV described was the recent winner of the Navy/Marine Corps competition to develop a new Small Tactical Unmanned Aerial System (STUAS)." This new UAV "will be able to carry a variety of heavier payloads for the same distances and flight duration".
"The value of small UAVs is that they provide tactical units, Army/Marine platoons and individual small warships, with their own real-time overhead tactical sensors. When you need to know what is going on over the next hill, track a terrorist back to his hideout or surveil the waters around a naval vessel or a maritime facility, systems like the Scan Eagle are critical."
Hood Tech's AltiCam imaging systems are an integral part of many of the UAVs described in Daniel Goure's article.