Brenda Marie Rivers
Raytheon Technologies has partnered with Canadian jet manufacturer Bombardier to develop an aircraft concept for multiple intelligence and airborne data gathering to support applications such as humanitarian aid, disaster monitoring, missile defense and border security.
Raytheon’s intelligence and space business and Bombardier plan to modify the latter’s Global 6500 jet to create the Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance aircraft that will collect and transmit real-time data from multiple sensors and at long distances.
ISTAR will include elements such as an active electronically scanned array radio-frequency system, a command-and-control platform, multispectral imaging technologies and other features for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Barbara Borgonovi, vice president of ISR systems at RI&S, said the ISTAR aircraft is meant to rapidly collect, process and send “copious amounts of information†in contested environments.
Bombardier's Global 6500 aircraft has a 17-passenger capacity and has avionics features such as a satellite communications system, MultiScan weather radar and combined vision system, according to the company's website.
