Army eyes cubesats for real-time targeting from space

July 30, 2021
Gunsmoke-J satellites will complete on-orbit demonstrations in 2021, culminating in a military assessment and transition to an Army program of record, Nathan Strout reports for Defense News.

WASHINGTON - It’s no secret that the U.S. Army wants to be able to target threats using imagery satellites, and now the service has a trio of bread loaf-sized cubesats on orbit to help test that capability, Nathan Strout reports for Defense News. Continue reading original article.

The Intelligent Aerospace take:

July 30, 2021 - The Army is keen to use the vantage of space to find and target beyond-line-of-sight threats. While satellite imagery has traditionally been a product of the intelligence community, the development of relatively affordable yet highly capable small satellites that can operate in low Earth orbit has convinced military leaders that it can play a tactical role on the battlefield.

In a demonstration last fall, the Army showed it could take images from satellites down to Earth, process them with artificial intelligence (AI) to find threats, and deliver targeting data to weapon systems in about 20 seconds.

That speed of targeting is opening a whole slew of possibilities to commanders by enabling them to see further down the battlefield in near real time than ever before.

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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace

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