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By Brandon Pollachek, PEO IEW&S PAO

ABERDEEN, Md. (Oct. 1, 2015) – A combination of two types of aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft (AISR) recently achieved an operational milestone of more than 50,000 flight hours in support of ongoing operations in Afghanistan.

Flying on King Air 350 and 350 extended range aircraft, the Army has utilized both the Constant Hawk (CH) as well as Tactical Operation (TACOP) Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems to serve as part of Joint Task Force Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize (ODIN) in Afghanistan for the past five years. Their overall mission is to collect surveillance imagery for processing, exploitation and dissemination in near-real time and for forensic purposes.

“Constant Hawk is a wide area persistent surveillance sensor that essentially gives you situational awareness of a wide swath of land,” said Ronald “Boomer” Rizzo, Deputy Product Manager Manned Aerial Reconnaissance Surveillance Systems. “Consider full motion video (FMV) to be like looking through a soda straw whereas the Constant Hawk sensor would be like looking through a gigantic panoramic lens as it provides hundreds of times more data versus FMV.”

CH aircraft are primarily used for pattern of life missions that provide critical information for commanders’ decision making process. TACOP utilizes a tactical LIDAR sensor that primarily develops geospatial imagery with approximately 25 different products that it can create. TACOP is used to create extremely detailed imagery and maps of areas of interest.

While reaching the 50,000 flight hours milestone the aircraft were able to maintain an overall mission capability rate in excess of 94 percent. Following their current role in TF ODIN, the Army has already earmarked the aircraft for future plans.

In recognizing the outstanding capability both platforms have provided to the Army and in an effort to capitalize on investment the current combined eight aircraft will be modified into the geospatial intelligence variant of the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System (EMARSS).

EMARSS is a manned multi-intelligence AISR system that provides a persistent capability to detect, locate, classify, identify and trace surface targets at day or night in near-all-weather conditions with a high degree of timeliness and accuracy. EMARSS will provide direct support to brigade combat teams.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]