There is a widespread requirement for wide area surveillance with target detection and recognition. To achieve the above aims with a single sensor is difficult and inevitably performance compromises have to be made. A system, designated Firefly, has been developed which splits the task of surveillance/target detection from that of recognition. Firefly uses separate sensors for both tasks, each sensor can then be optimized for the role it has to perform For surveillance and target detection, Firefly makes use of a previously developed scanned thermal imager operating in the 8 - 11 micrometer waveband. There was no suitable sensor available for the recognition role and so a 3 - 5 micrometer imager based on a 2D starring array was developed for this purpose. The Firefly system is described in this paper with emphasis being given to a description of the high resolution, recognition sensor where the development effort was concentrated. Results of performance also are given.
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