The use of covert unmanned aerial vehicles advancing rapidly at even the state and local levels
DALLAS (Feb. 18, 2013) – The deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) in the United States will soon be more than just border security, but state and local too, as the FAA opens up more air space.
And the UAVs are going to be increasingly covert, hard to spot, says Michael Payne, CEO and chief technology officer for Vislink, the parent of Microwave Radio Communications (MRC). “As the UAVs become more and more accepted, as the bad guys become more and more creative in terms of how they do things, we need to be more and more covert,” says Payne. “And just being able to keep up with those challenges is really where the industry is going.”
Payne says Vislink specializes in microwave, satellite and IP/cellular surveillance, but not weapons systems. The Vislink transmitters and receivers are very compact and portable where one person on the ground can operate, and the bad guys cannot jam it. “You don’t always have to go from the airborne unit to the ground,” says Payne, but to “somewhere in space, and that makes it almost impossible to jam.”
Payne made his comments by phone from his office near Boston on the ScienceNews Radio Network program, the Promise of Tomorrow with Colonel Mason. The program originates in Dallas, Texas, and is now archived and Webcast for its world audience.
When Mason asked Payne what is coming next, he replied “enhanced capabilities on what we have right now, and a lot of that is being driven by the rocket, the lightning speed, at which the telecom providers are able to provide us with over-the-air communications.”
As vital to US and world security, Payne and Vislink will be a feature at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST 13). The conference will be held at the Westin Waltham hotel in Waltham, Mass., USA, 12-14 November, 2013. For more information and to register, visit www.ieee-hst.org
Comments