| TRACER
addresses the Army's critical need to identify hidden targets,
enemy equipment and facilities. The system's design is predicated
on the corporation's proven foliage penetration (FOPEN) technology,
which was developed specifically to detect vehicles, buildings,
and large metallic objects in broad areas of dense foliage,
forested areas and wooded terrain. It will be able to spot suspicious
cavities, which could be used for used for weapon caches in
building or underground or explosive charges buried at roadsides.
TRACER will able to provide long-range, wide area detection
of targets under camouflage, concealment & deception (CC&D)
conditions, and support wide area mapping in complex environments.
The 32 months program includes the development, integration
and test of two VHF/UHF dual-band synthetic aperture radar systems,
which will be integrated into Predator class unmanned aerial
vehicles. The system will process raw radar data on-board in
near real-time processing change detection and possibly orthorectification
to provide accurate geo-location of targets. These dual-band
synthetic aperture radars can provide images to ground units
in all-weather, day or night conditions and incorporate a data
link that allows processed results to be downlinked to ground
stations immediately. The TRACER ground station element will
provide the target reports, with appropriate time-tag, geolocation
and other information.
Developed under the sponsorship of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force in the
late 1990's, the FOPEN system has successfully flown hundreds
of missions.
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