Gorgon Stare Wide Area Motion Imagery EXPLAINED by Sierra Nevada Corporation

Video Transcript

When the ancient Greek gorgon Medusa stared down upon her enemies, they were frozen in place, their voices mute, their bodies turned to stone. In this petrified state, she studied them with a sharper eye. The smallest details revealed, the story of their lives held still before her. Sierra Nevada Corporation's Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Division developed Gorgon Stair in response to an urgent Department of Defense need for a realtime surveillance system. Wide area airborne persistence surveillance or WOPS is the ability to continually observe a large area from an airborne platform capable of watching a city-sized area 24 hours a day for an unlimited amount of time. The systems electrooptical and infrared sensors capture all activity without interruption in the field of view both day and night. An Air Force MQ9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft equipped with the Gorgon Stair system observes a potential threat, revealing its story, its secrets, its intent. This extended overwatch streams live realtime footage of the area within the flight's circle of persistence to multiple users and stores the footage in a real time accessible archive. Live view capability in the circle of persistence provides situational awareness to both command authorities and unlimited on the ground units and users simultaneously with the ability to search and rewind through the data. The imagery can be studied in near real time for forensic analysis in the wake of an incident. Gorgon Stair is a battleproven ISR system with over 10,000 flight hours in combat operations. It has detected and neutralized numerous threats as the reconnaissance asset of choice for maneuver commanders. What once days of intelligence preparation of the battle space has now been reduced to a single mission. In addition to displaying the full field of view, 10 distinct zoom areas within Gorgon Stair's unblinking view can be simultaneously collected and distributed to any appropriately equipped users, including intelligence centers, on the ground tactical troops, and first responders. [Music]