Autonomous real-time ground ubiquitous surveillance - Imaging system (ARGUS-IS)

Finding, tracking and monitoring events and activities of interest on a continuous basis remains one of our highest Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) requirements. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) serve as one of the warfighter's primary and most responsive means for surveillance and gathering intelligence information and are becoming vital assets in military operations. This is demonstrated by their significant use in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lessons learned from these operations indicate that UAVs provide critical capabilities for enhancing situational awareness, intelligence gathering and force protection for our military forces. Current LAS high resolution electro-optics offers a small high resolution field of view (FOV). This narrow FOV is a limiting factor on the utility of the EO system. The UAS that are available offer persistence; however, the effectiveness of the EO system is limited by the sensors and available processing. DARPA is addressing this developing the next generation of persistent, very wide area surveillance with the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System (ARGUS-IS). The system will be capable of imaging an area of greater than 40 square kilometers with a Ground Space Distance (GSD) of 15 cm at video rates of greater than 12 Hz. This paper will discuss the elements of the ARGUS-IS program.