Constant Hawk is a United States Armywide-area motion imagery system flown on manned reconnaissance aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like similar wide-area surveillance systems, such as Gorgon Stare, ARGUS-IS or the aerostat-mounted Kestrel, Constant Hawk was designed to give operators a fuller view of an area than they would normally get from standard full-motion video cameras. The Army first deployed Constant Hawk in 2006 as part of a Quick Reaction Capability to help combat enemy ambushes and improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq. Constant Hawk flew on Short 360-300s in Iraq under the command of Task Force ODIN. And the system was introduced to Afghanistan in 2009, where it is still in use aboard MC-12W Liberty aircraft.
Development
Initial work on Constant Hawk began in the early 2000s at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as part of the Sonoma Persistent Surveillance Program, a U.S. Department of Energy effort to monitor nuclear proliferation. In 2005, Constant Hawk was passed to the U.S. Department of Defense, which led to its development under the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, MD. Since 2005, MIT has been developing processing algorithms enabling efficient formation, exploitation and dissemination of Constant Hawk imagery. In 2009, BAE Systems provided an additional, infrared payload for Constant Hawk called the Airborne Wide Area Persistent Surveillance Sensor. In 2013, the MIT sensor MASIVS was deployed by Constant Hawk increasing pixel counts by an order of magnitude and providing full color imagery processed in real-time on board the aircraft.
Features
Constant Hawk includes a 96-megapixel camera as part of its sensor suite and software that detects changes and patterns in collected imagery. This allows intelligence analysts to detect roadside bombs and prepared ambushes.
Upgrades and Similar Systems
In 2007, the U.S. Marine Corps developed an upgrade to Constant Hawk called Angel Fire. In 2011, a Constant Hawk spinoff called Kestrel began deployment on aerostats in Afghanistan. Additionally, many of Constant Hawk's capabilities have been miniaturized or improved in newer wide-area persistent surveillance systems such as Logos Technologies' Kestrel. Kestrel reduces size and weight, while increasing image resolution and adding a day/night surveillance capability. In addition, the U.S. Air Force is working on Gorgon Stare, a wide-area persistence surveillance system designed for the MQ-9 Reaper. Gorgon Stare was initially scheduled for deployment in 2010. Another system still in development by DARPA is ARGUS-IS.
