Exelis expands surveillance potential of CorvusEye with night capability

Exelis has added a new visible colour and infrared (IR) sensor to the CorvusEye wide area airborne surveillance coverage system to enhance night time surveillance capabilities.

Aimed at complementing the company’s daytime electro-optical sensor launched this May, the new sensors are being offered as an integrated end-to-end system and also separately.

The CorvusEye 1500CM system offers surveillance coverage of about 2km in diameter and can track movement linked to potentially hazardous activity, in addition to other activities such as migratory or invasive wildlife behavior.

Exelis CorvusEye 1500 product development director Mike Hayes said: "The cover of darkness creates a disadvantage for surveillance.

"Customers are telling us that the ability to watch nighttime activities with a system like the daytime version of CorvusEye would greatly improve the ability to counter possible threats to borders, events, infrastructure and other interests."

Capable of being integrated on most mid-size unmanned and manned aircraft, the new 95lb system can capture activity happening all together in multiple areas, while swapping into any 15in airframe mounting location.

A single CorvusEye sensor is claimed to simultaneously cater to ten different area views and offer close-up details together with streaming footage.

The end-to-end system boasts potential to rapidly accumulate critical intelligence for investigations through archived footage and comes with ground station software for live data streaming to mobile devices.