Jacobs' KeyRadar flight tested in AgilePod airborne pod

Jacobs has completed flight testing of the latest variant of its proprietary KeyRadar multi-band/multifunction airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) radar.

Completed in conjunction with the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC), the flight-test campaign saw the KeyRadar system flown on a commercially operated Saab 340B aircraft while hosted in an AgilePod aerial sensor pod. AFLCMC certified the airworthiness of the pod under Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness criteria: the Saab 340B aircraft itself is part of contractor Airborne Imaging’s fleet.

Built on a software-defined radio/radar architecture, KeyRadar is a multimission, multimode synthetic aperture radar system for wide-area ISR over land, littoral, and maritime regions. Applications include wide-area surveillance and change detection; vehicle and dismounted moving target indication; activity-based intelligence and motion intelligence; automated manmade object detection; land cover/land use maps; foliage penetration; building penetration; and ground penetration/counter-IED operations.

Operating in multiple frequency bands (P-band, L-band, and X-band), KeyRadar uses processing and detection/recognition software to locate, track, and identify concealed targets. Offering an extremely wide field-of-view, the system offers long-, medium-, short-range standoff from medium or high altitude (hardware is ruggedised for unpressurised operation at 25,000 ft).

Jacobs has completed flight testing of its KeyRadar multiband/multifunction airborne radar in an AgilePod airborne sensor pod. (Jacobs)

In a 16 September statement, Jacobs said integrating KeyRadar into an airborne pod served to “demonstrate its unique ISR and target detection/recognition capabilities from manned and unmanned aircraft, with a self-contained, unpressurised rapid-on/rapid-off capability”. The company added that the programme demonstrated the proprietary KeyPAD software, which is applied in KeyRadar for automated human-made object detection.