[Infowarrior] - "DO NOT" Field Gorgon Stare, USAF Evaluation Says

[Richard Forno]

A Defense Technology Blog

"DO NOT" Field Gorgon Stare, USAF Evaluation Says

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defen

Posted by Paul McLeary at 1/24/2011 2:30 PM CST

Earlier this month, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance Maj. Gen. James Poss boasted
to the Washington Post that the service’s new airborne surveillance tool,
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."

Mounted to unmanned Reaper UAVs, Gorgon Stare’s nine cameras—five for
daylight snooping, four for nighttime operations—have been billed as the
next game-changing technology in surveillance and information gathering from
the sky.

Despite boasts to the contrary, a document leaked by InsideDefense today
reveals that Air Force testers drafted a memo dated December 30, 2010,
offering a “DO NOT field recommendation” for the system.

In tests that began in October 2010, the Air Force “evaluated the adequacy
and operational effectiveness and suitability of the GS weapon system.”
After conducting seven sorties totaling 64 flight hours, the team
“identified a Category I deficiency that rendered imagery unusable
(excessive “stare-point wander”).”

Then in November, the Air Force began flying 20 more sorties—totaling 234
flight hours—that wrapped up on December 23rd. The overall assessment? “The
[Gorgon Stare Wide-Area Airborne Surveillance] system is not operationally
effective and not operationally suitable. The GS system, as tested, has
significant limitations that degrade its operational utility including
deficient IR performance, numerous [remote video terminal] interoperability
problems, unpredictable system reliability/stability, and lack of system
documentation.” The unit doing the testing also found that the “imagery
quality is relatively poor, which yields marginal mission capability at
night.”

Not a good report, especially since the Air Force has been boasting about
the system for some time. Expect lots more about this issue as the Air Force
tries to get out in front of the story.