Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/139409
T The edge OF TECH dr. simon roy is a defence scientist and EO/IR sensor expert in the Tactical Surveillance and Reconnaissance Section at DRDC valcartier in Quebec. It waS a DaRK anD StoRmy nIght Taking AIMS on difficult surveillance Above, left, the integrated workstation delivers STANAG 4609 to facilitate dissemination and exploitation of full motion video products; right, the AIMS technology demonstrator's stabilized turret integrates multiple EO-IR cameras. F rom the air, detecting and identifying ground targets, by day or by night, is a strenuous task. Operators must often contend with high workloads, extreme motion, poor atmospheric or ground conditions, pressing time constraints, stress and fatigue. To assist military operators in these challenging conditions, while also improving Canadian Armed Forces capabilities during search and rescue (SAR) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has developed the Advanced Integrated Multi-sensing Surveillance (AIMS) system. Conceived in 2004, AIMS received flight certification in 2010 and has since accumulated over 50 flight hours on the National Research Council's DHC-6 Twin Otter. The project has now moved to dry fitment and ground testing, and to a demonstration flight onboard a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-130H Hercules airplane in the summer of 2013. This demonstration integrates AIMS with the Rapid Mount Airborne Sensor System, a parallel DND-sponsored development. 44 JUNE/JULY 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com canadian, eh? AIMS is the world's first airborne range-gated active imager integrated into an electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) multi-sensor stabilized turret. The sensor package includes the near-IR active imager, a thermal imager, wide and narrow field-of-view colour cameras, a laser rangefinder, and a GPS/INS unit. Funded and led by DRDC, this technology demonstration involves several Canadian companies from across the country such as Obzerv Technologies, L-3 Wescam, CarteNav and Thales Systems Canada, who have worked on various key features of the project. active imaging technology The active imager, as the crown jewel of the sensor suite, consists of a narrow field-of-view, range-gated intensified camera and a near-infrared pulsed laser diode array illuminator. The laser provides covert illumination, enabling nighttime target illumination. The approach complements thermal imagers and (passive, low resolution) night vision technologies, which require