As the military emerges from the counter-terrorism era and pivots toward a focus on near-peer conflicts, new needs are coming to the fore around aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
The sensors under development will integrate onto the Army's well-known HADES aerial ISR program, designed to conduct "deep" intelligence gathering and target tracking.
With the prototypes, "we're able to launch from one area and very quickly get to another area that is much further away in distance. So it opens up the aperture from a mission perspective," a program leader said.