The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, said the sensor is part of its Video Synthetic Aperture Radar, or ViSAR, program that recently completed flight testing.
“The recent flight tests of the ViSAR sensor marked a major program milestone toward our goal, proving that we can take uninterrupted live video of targets on the ground even when flying through or above clouds,” Bruce Wallace, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said in a news release. “The EO/IR sensors on board the test aircraft went blank whenever clouds obscured the view, but the synthetic aperture radar tracked ground objects continuously throughout the flight.”
DARPA’s ViSAR program started in 2013 to develop an extremely high frequency sensor for targeting that can operate through clouds as effectively as current electro-optical and infrared, or EO/IR, sensors operate in clear weather.
“The recent flight tests of the ViSAR sensor marked a major program milestone toward our goal, proving that we can take uninterrupted live video of targets on the ground even when flying through or above clouds,” Bruce Wallace, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said in a news release. “The EO/IR sensors on board the test aircraft went blank whenever clouds obscured the view, but the synthetic aperture radar tracked ground objects continuously throughout the flight.”
DARPA’s ViSAR program started in 2013 to develop an extremely high frequency sensor for targeting that can operate through clouds as effectively as current electro-optical and infrared, or EO/IR, sensors operate in clear weather.
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