Posted on 12/15/2009 2:02:34 AM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Afghanistan, American aircraft equipped with radar (that can see what's on the ground), are tailing Taliban suspects driving through remote areas. Operators in these JSTARS aircraft can track movement of ground units, or individual vehicles, over a wide area. Operators can also use the detail mode to pick out specific details of what's going on down there, like tracking the movement of vehicles fleeing the scene of a battle, or meeting with Taliban leaders. JSTARS is real good at picking up trucks moving along highways on flat terrain, but the equipment has now been tweaked to deal with the mountains and valleys so common in Afghanistan. JSTARS can stay up there for over 12 hours at a time, and two or more JSTARS can operate in shifts to provide 24/7 coverage. Earlier in Iraq, JSTARS were used to monitor the Syrian and Iranian borders for smugglers. Some stuff comes across the borders in trucks, but much still arrives on the back of animals, which JSTARS could not track back then. But tracking the movement of vehicles in western Iraq, in the middle of night, proved useful. When the JSTARS crew (of 18 equipment and surveillance specialists) spots something, they can alert combat troops on the ground, or a nearby UAV, to take a closer look. JSTARS can also send its data to computer terminals on the ground, in army brigade or division headquarters.
(Excerpt) Read more at strategypage.com ...
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Its sad, we can’t buy new airframes to build these on.
Those 707’s were old and worn out when TWA put them out to pasture decades ago, now the USAF has to go and resurrect them for such an important mission.
Someone needs their ass kicked for not budgeting for new airframes for this mission. Even if Boeing had to build a new bird...
JSTARS went operational in 1991 for the opening round of the PGW. IIRC, they can record vast quantities of tracking information and, if an “interesting” situation develops, play the tracking information backwards to track participants back to their sources...
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