5 Questions About the Air Force's Gorgon Stare Drone

The military is expected soon to send a new sensor system on its Reaper unmanned aircraft flying over Afghanistan that can keep watch over entire cities. The Air Force has even named the new "all seeing" system Gorgon Stare, after the mythological creature that could turn people into stone with her stare.

But in reality, the sensor system -- which provides what is known in military nomenclature as wide-area surveillance -- works a bit more like a house fly than a monster.

How does Gorgon Stare work?

Key to Gorgon Stare are its nine cameras -- five that can see in daylight, and four that can see in the dark using infrared. The system also comes equipped with a computer that can process the images. A bit like a fly, these cameras capture images from a variety of different angles, creating a huge field of view.

Does it capture video or just still images?

It does capture video as well as still images, but at a very, very slow rate. The cameras snaps just two frames per second, so watching the video would be looking at a flickering movie clip.

How much can it see?

The Air Force won't say precisely how large a geographic area Gorgon Stare covers, but officials have talked about its ability to capture images of neighborhoods, or even a whole town.

"Instead of looking at a truck or a house, you can look at an entire village or a small city," one Air Force general told Aviation Week.

What will people watching the Gorgon Stare images see?

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One of the unique features of Gorgon Stare is that it will stitch together the various camera feeds, providing a large panoramic view of the ground below. So, unlike someone watching separate views provided by cameras on closed-circuit television, Gorgon Stare produces a seamless image. Why is this important? Well, the older video feeds from Predator drones are often compared to the type of view you get when looking through a soda straw; in other words, a very small slice of a faraway scene. The idea is to enlarge that soda straw as much as possible, so you can spot things of interest, like an insurgent planting a roadside bomb.

How can anyone watch that big an area at once?

No single person can, and that's part of the challenge the Air Force faces once Gorgon Stare is flying above Afghanistan. The Air Force, in fact, is preparing for a torrential downpour of data that will come from Afghanistan once the sensor system is in use, and the military will be using new tools to trawl through the images, including instant replay technology similar to what the NFL uses.