Category Archives: Sensors

Foreign Non-Coalition, Sensors

Pakistan to build its own UAVs, abandoning US purchase

UPI reports that Pakistan will manufacture its own UAVs, after having sought UAVs from the US. The Pakistani military will collaborate with the Italian firm Selex Galileo to manufacture the UAV domestically at Pakistan Aeronautical Complex in Kamra in Punjab province.

Military cooperation with Pakistan has been souring recently, as the Obama administration has admonished Pakistan for modifying Harpoon missiles to strike land targets (like the Boeing’s SLAM ER, which is also based on the Harpoon).  Pakistan’s foreign minister denied that Pakistan had made modifications to the missiles, which could in theory be used to strike targets in India.

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Contractors & Vendors, Lockheed Martin, Sensors

Lockheed Flying Intel Lab gets cleared for takeoff

Lockheed Martin's Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory

Lockheed Martin's AML

Lockheed Martin’s Airborne Intelligence Test Bed has completed its maiden flight, getting an air-worthiness certificate from the FAA.  The Airborn Multi-Intelligence Laboratory (AML – a name clearly sculpted to avoid the AIL label) is a reconfigured Gulfstream III business jet loaded with sensors and computing equipment.

The AML has an ample radome on the bottom of the aircraft that can be crammed with various sensors and data links. “We’ve designed the AML so that we can easily test a myriad of sensors to advance the science and art of correlating diverse types of intelligence – with the goal of rapidly providing high-quality data,” said Jim Quinn, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services-Defense’s vice president of C4ISR Systems, in a company statement.

Because of its reconfigurable, “plug and play” architecture for sensors and computing systems, the AML can be used for a variety of evaluations at the same time. The aircraft is currently slated to participate in the C4ISR On-The-Move exercise at Ft. Dix in New Jersey at the end of August.

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