Kestrel Surveillance

Need a tool to watch the muggles 24/7? May I suggest the Kestrel Persistent Wide Area Surveillance System?

Saw this in Homeland Security Today. A new system developed for the defense department that can watch an area the size of a city and take a picture every second.

Under contract to the Department of Defense (DoD), Logos Technologies has deployed 11 of its Kestrel intelligent persistent surveillance systems to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. DoD uses Kestrel mounted on aerostats, where the devices can scan wide areas for suspicious activity. Kestrel, which can watch an area the size of a city, also can help its operators retrace the steps of criminals or insurgents to uncover their activities or to figure out their patterns, John Marion, Logos Technologies executive vice president, told Homeland Security Today.
"It takes a picture every second and stores it. It's good in real-time for situational awareness and for monitoring -- for instance -- the border fence in Nogales," Marion said. "But it's also a time machine in the sense that you can go back in time and recreate what occurred."
During the test in Arizona, the CBP operators used the system in one case to monitor trespassers with backpacks, a certain sign that they were smuggling drugs. The subjects under surveillance managed to hide their backpacks at one point; they may have been lost to authorities if a solution like Kestrel had not been able to rewind surveillance video and see where the backpacks disappeared and thus locate where they were stashed.
In a similar way, Border Patrol agents could use Kestrel to discover the patterns in movements of illegal migrants or drug smugglers as they cross into the United States, Marion suggested. In Afghanistan, soldiers have been able to understand the patterns of insurgent networks by observing their behavior with Kestrel and tracking the various key points in their routes. Using this information, warfighters have been able to determine where drop points or communications hubs for high-level insurgents have been as Kestrel was able to track the movements of low-level insurgents over time.

Kestrel, like the Vader radar system, is a paradigm-shifting technology, Marion said. They allow security forces to perform innovative tasks in new ways.Border Patrol agents were able to track the number of getaways, illegal migrants who escaped, using Kestrel because of its ability to track everything in its range. As lawmakers call upon the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to improve its metrics for detaining illegal aliens, Kestrel can help, Marion said.

"They were impressed that virtually everybody we could see, we caught," he said.

This spring the US Department of Homeland Security tested the Kestrel system for border security around Nogales, Arizona. A Raven Aerostar aerostat was fitted out with a Wescam MX-15 hi-res, narrow-field camera from L-3 Communications  and a Kestrel day/night medium-res, wide-area persistent surveillance system. Thanks to the system, authorities apprehended 30 suspects on the first night of the demonstration and made a total of 80 arrests over the course of the week. Hot dog! 'Cause if somebody is wearing a backpack, you can be sure they are doing something illegal.

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Argus

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BAE's Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System