Law and military enforcement interventions will be safer for the officers/soldiers

May 23, 2014 18:22 GMT  ·  By

Charging into a building isn’t exactly the safest thing to do when there’s an armed lunatic inside, but sometimes there isn’t much choice in the matter. And even if you manage to diffuse the situation peacefully, sometimes you can’t do it without an “inside scoop” as it were.

Normally, that inside info comes from, well, an informant. But you don’t always have the luxury of one.

To compensate for lack of information, Exelis has created a new type of hyperspectral (HSI) sensor that can pick up shapes, movement, gas and fume emanations (hints of bombs, traps or budding fires) and a lot more through the infrared spectrum.

Well, technically, the HSI sensor can tap into a broad electromagnetic spectrum and provides a fairly accurate view of what is inside a building. Basically, it’s like looking through the walls like Superman.

Until today, HSI sensors had to be super-frozen in order to pick up gas and fumes, like those from IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They lacked clarity and precision otherwise.

The new one from Exelis, however, doesn’t rely on that, and it doesn’t need to be immobile and stuck to a plane’s fuselage either. It can be mounted on a stabilized, rotary gimbal, meaning that the plane doesn’t actually have to cross into foreign territory to scan places. It can fly parallel to the border and let the unit turn its “gaze” towards the target.

That makes it good as a scouting tool for war, but law enforcement can benefit a lot too. You can see the Exelis HSI sensor in the photo above. It’s a pretty large piece of work.