A Cost and Time Effective Alternative for an Aerial Reconnaissance and Surveillance Platform

An expanded need for information obtainable from aerial sensor platforms is driving research and development towards both the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) and the extensive physical redesign of existing airframes to accommodate alternative capabilities. This trend in aerial platform development requires significant time and funding and has yet to transpire into low single-system cost that can be rapidly set to use. An alternative concept of utilizing existing and unmodified airframes as sensor platforms, through the use of peripheral systems, presents an attractive solution to this problem. A particular sensor platform system (Oculus) has been designed for use upon a C-130 aircraft and, as a blueprint concept, shows considerable design flexibility for use upon additional existing military and commercial airframes. This roll-on roll-off sensor platform is a stand alone system that requires no modification to the C-130 airframe and has the capacity to incorporate multi-mission sensor capabilities which can be used for a wide variety of missions. These missions are (but not limited to) Environmental Impact Assessment, Counter Drug, Counter Terrorism, Homeland Security, Resource Surveys, Environmental Surveys, and Search and Rescue. This system (patent pending) has been developed to support a broad spectrum of the latest in remote sensor technology for missions requiring highly proficient reconnaissance capabilities. It was also designed under the criterion of mission flexibility, stability, field of view, storability, modular attachment space and provisions for expansion and upgrade. This sensor platform system provides a superior cost-effective upgrade capability to existing airframes.