The next IED hunter? U.S. examines Blue Heron, ITT's airborne hyperspectral imager

摘要

The organization created by the U.S. Defense Department to combat the threat of improvised explosive devices -- enemy No. 1 for the allies in Afghanistan -- has the unwieldy task of sorting through hundreds of proposals for the best ideas and rushing them to the battlefield. One such proposal under consideration is from ITT. ITT's Blue Heron is a hyperspectral imager that the company has flown in trials in Honduras, Utah and California. It consists of three cameras housed inside a 20-inch-diameter turret -- a long-wave infrared hyperspectral imager, a visible-light camera and a midwave infrared camera. The sensors can be focused on a specific point on the ground, or search a broad area. Blue Heron is similar in some respects to the Raytheon-built hyperspectral imager flown on the U.S. TacSat-3 satellite, which the Air Force declared operational in June. But it can fly closer to suspicious objects. The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), the Pentagon office in charge of developing counter-IED technology, is evaluating Blue Heron, according to a spokeswoman. The organization has made no decisions on whether to provide funding.