HD cameras on drones is closer to reality - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

HD cameras on drones is closer to reality

DENVER — On their big screens at home, airmen can watch the beads of sweat gather on the batter’s forehead and watch his cleats break a blade of grass in half.

Baseball in high definition is almost like sitting at club level halfway between home plate and first base.

But when the airmen go to work, they have to monitor grainy feeds from remotely piloted aircraft flying over Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, pictures of the war are going to get just as sharp as those from the ballpark.

“It’s in the not-too-distant future,” Lt. Gen. David Deptula said in June, before he retired as the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “We’re working on HD capability right now. That is something that is being worked on today.”

Sensor balls littered the convention floor here at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Unmanned Systems North America 2010 conference — each ready to broadcast HD feeds back to troops on the ground or big screens in operations centers.

Each company claims to have solved the puzzle that has kept the Air Force in the stone age of television — standard definition. Each official lists the hurdles the Air Force wanted solved before it added HD.

First, cut down the amount of bandwidth needed to transmit feed since bandwidth is at a premium in the war zone.

Harris and ViaSat built encoders that compress the signal and make it comparable to standard definition signals. FLIR and L3’s HD sensor balls have the encoders built directly into them.

Next, cut down the weight of the sensors since each extra pound is one less pound of fuel the aircraft can carry.

The companies lightened their HD sensors to make them only a pound or two heavier than their standard-definition counterparts.

A general who addressed the conference has his own questions about HD.

The first one that Brig. Gen. H.D. Polumbo, who oversees plans and programs for Air Combat Command, wants answered: How much electricity will the HD sensor balls need?

“I think one that is missed often is you have the electrical generation capability to power it and all the other electrical systems on that aircraft,” Polumbo told Air Force Times. “We found that repeatedly in multiple platforms that you don’t always have a big enough generator to power a sensor.”

FLIR’s HD sensor balls eat up almost the same amount of electricity a standard-definition ball would, said David Strong, a vice president with the company.

For Polumbo, the service also must buy HD televisions screens in ops centers and distribute common ground systems where imagery analysts analyze feeds. Without the screens, it doesn’t make much sense, he said.

But before the Air Force rushes out to an electronics store, Polumbo wants his fellow leaders to answer this: Why exactly does the service need high-definition sensors?

“What military operations, what tasks do we need high definition in our sensors and in our full motion video?” Polumbo said. “When you find those repeatable military tasks that require it, we get it done.”