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Ground Surveillance Aircraft.
Ten years after Operation Desert Storm, in which fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft equipped with synthetic aperture and moving-target indication radars made their operational debuts, the World's leading nations are assessing how they can cost-effectively meet their individual ground surveillance needs.
The Lockheed U-2 first flew in 1955 and made its first Soviet overflight less than twelve months later. The current military version is the U-2S, the principal sensor of which is the Raytheon Asars-2 (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System-2). More than 30 U-2S aircraft are still operated by the US Air Force. They are currently receiving several upgrades, including improved radar with better imagery and MTI (moving target indication) features. The electro-optical sensor is also being upgraded. Improvements are forecast in geolocation accuracy, area coverage and sensor resolution at longer ranges. However, since the US Air Force hopes to replace the U-2 with the Global Hawk UAV, it is not to receive Joint Signals Intelligence Avionics Family (JSIAF) equipment. Soviet Responses It was only in 1982 that the Soviet Un...See the full content of this document
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