Kabul, January, 02: The United States is set to send a new airborne surveillance system to Afghanistan, which it says would enable its military forces to view more operational and physical movements in the area.
The intelligence drones, called Gorgon Stare, are capable of transmitting live video images of physical movement across an entire town, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.
According to the paper, the surveillance system consists of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, which can transmit up to 65 live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements.
Currently, the existing intelligence drones can only shoot video from a single camera over a narrow area the size of a building or two, but the new system can monitor the entire city, the daily suggests.
“Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything,” the paper quoted Major General James Poss, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as saying.
Some 150,000 foreign troops are currently stationed in Afghanistan, nearly two-thirds of which are Americans.
—Agencies