Service requirements for persistent surveillance have resulted in the rapid development of a new generation of highly advanced sensor packages for UAS. In October, Lockheed Martin's Tactical Reconnaissance and Counter-Concealment Enabled Radar (TRACER) undertook its first flight aboard an MQ-9 Predator B UAV. The flight marked the first time penetrating radar has flown on a fixed-wing UAV, and is an important milestone in the US Army's programme to field a persistent wide-area search-and-detection-under-obscuration radar capability. Obscuration includes camouflage, dense foliage, building materials and netting and the dual-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is able to detect vehicles, buildings and other man-made objects buried or concealed underneath such cover, as well as delivering ground-penetrating capabilities.
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