BlackKite Sensor Flies on US Army Group 4 UAS at EDGE 23 Demonstration Event

Logos Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems of America, announced today that its BlackKite IR wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) pod was, for the first time ever, successfully employed on a U.S. Army Group 4 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) during the Experimentation Demonstration Gateway Event (EDGE) 23, held at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, this past month.  

The BlackKite WAMI system, which can image, track and record hundreds of targets moving across a city-sized area, was used in experimental long-range detection and identification missions during EDGE 23, with the Group 4 UAS serving as a surrogate platform for a future Air-Launched Effects (ALE) drone being pursued by the Army.

"We demonstrated how our lightweight BlackKite pod could be used in the long-range detection of enemy vehicles and air defense systems,” said Doug Rombough, VP of Business Development at Logos Technologies. “And even though the Group 4 UAS was only meant to serve as a surrogate for ALE, we also showed how our platform-agnostic BlackKite pod could work with long-endurance Group 4 UAS."

BlackKite weighs less than 38 pounds in the podded version and can been mounted to planes, helicopters, and Group 3 (or larger) UAS. When BlackKite is placed inside an existing payload bay, it only adds 25 pounds to the platform. At an altitude of 12,000 feet, BlackKite can image a 16 square kilometer area, detecting and tracking in real time multiple moving vehicles and dismounts. It can also store greater than eight hours of recorded and geo-referenced imagery with its onboard processor.

BlackKite can stream both live and archived imagery to users on the ground, so they have perfect situational awareness whatever the mission—be it, force protection, tactical-level persistent surveillance, route reconnaissance and overwatch, or border security" said Rombough.