The US military plans to deploy a new intelligence drone in Afghanistan, which military experts say will allow US troops to monitor much larger operational theatres than before, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. The newspaper said the airborne surveillance system is called Gorgon Stare and will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.In 2010, a total of 711 international troops were killed in Afghanistan, according to independent website iCasualties - the highest annual death toll since the war began in 2001.
The system consists of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, which can can transmit up to 65 live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements, the paper said. By contrast, current Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a narrow area the size of a building or two, The Post noted.
“Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything,” the paper quoted Major General James Poss, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as saying.
There are around 140,000 international troops fighting the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, around two-thirds of them from the United States.
On Saturday the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, met Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss border security as Afghanistan battles a nine-year Taliban insurgency.
Napolitano, who is on a two-day visit to Afghanistan, held talks with Karzai and his finance minister Omar Zakhilwal.
“In coordination with US and Afghan military forces, the dedicated civilian Department of Homeland Security personnel assisting the Afghan government with customs and border control have made significant progress in disrupting Al-Qaeda operations in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” she said in a statement released by her office afterwards.
There are currently 25 staff from the Department of Homeland Security working to help boost security in Afghanistan.
A further 52 ex-customs and border protection or border patrol officers are arriving to work on related projects.
Karzai and Napolitano also discussed efforts to disrupt the trafficking of chemicals which militants use to manufacture deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs), her office added.
Napolitano was due to travel to Qatar on Sunday before heading to Israel and then Belgium to discuss issues including protecting the aviation sector from terrorist threats. The visit comes following last year’s global parcel bombs scare affecting cargo aircraft.
France rejected as “absurd” Taliban claims that two French journalists held hostage in Afghanistan for more than a year may have been spying, and said it was committed to securing their release.
A Taliban spokesman accused France earlier Saturday of not paying “much attention” to its demands for the release of Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, whom it said had been intelligence gathering rather than reporting.
The system consists of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, which can can transmit up to 65 live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements, the paper said. By contrast, current Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a narrow area the size of a building or two, The Post noted.
“Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything,” the paper quoted Major General James Poss, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as saying.
There are around 140,000 international troops fighting the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, around two-thirds of them from the United States.
On Saturday the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, met Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss border security as Afghanistan battles a nine-year Taliban insurgency.
Napolitano, who is on a two-day visit to Afghanistan, held talks with Karzai and his finance minister Omar Zakhilwal.
“In coordination with US and Afghan military forces, the dedicated civilian Department of Homeland Security personnel assisting the Afghan government with customs and border control have made significant progress in disrupting Al-Qaeda operations in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” she said in a statement released by her office afterwards.
There are currently 25 staff from the Department of Homeland Security working to help boost security in Afghanistan.
A further 52 ex-customs and border protection or border patrol officers are arriving to work on related projects.
Karzai and Napolitano also discussed efforts to disrupt the trafficking of chemicals which militants use to manufacture deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs), her office added.
Napolitano was due to travel to Qatar on Sunday before heading to Israel and then Belgium to discuss issues including protecting the aviation sector from terrorist threats. The visit comes following last year’s global parcel bombs scare affecting cargo aircraft.
France rejected as “absurd” Taliban claims that two French journalists held hostage in Afghanistan for more than a year may have been spying, and said it was committed to securing their release.
A Taliban spokesman accused France earlier Saturday of not paying “much attention” to its demands for the release of Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, whom it said had been intelligence gathering rather than reporting.
The U.S. Air Force has worked for several years to improve the Gorgon's vision after it deployed to Afghanistan last year. The initial cameras could only process choppy video feeds, leading U.S. personnel to use the videos as cameras before zeroing in on the target. AF officials announced that within a year or two the Gorgon could process simultaneous video feeds. No reason to doubt they would deliver.
ReplyDeleteOf course drones are used for more than killing - Afghanistan is a live Big Brother experiment.