The Department of Defense has deployed persistent surveillance systems on aerostats in Afghanistan. These systems scan a city-wide area constantly, day and night. When the system detects a threat in its field of view, a high resolution camera system including FLIR is employed to characterize the target.
The system developer required a custom rugged 5U system providing a high power System Host Board and four GPU processor boards in a PCI Express backplane to process the bandwidth coming down from the aerostat. In addition, 48TB of very high speed RAID storage is attached to the system to provide up to four weeks of image retention. Because the systems are deployed on the battlefield in Afghanistan, CP Technologies designed the system to be in full compliance with MIL-STD-810G including blowing sand and dust rejection and shock and vibration. The EMI gasketed front door contains a high efficiency air filter in combination with a honeycomb EMI filter. The three high reliability aluminum frame fans are controlled by CP Technologies’s SysCool® fan control board to maximize filter life while minimizing fan noise. CP Technologies engineered, fabricated, integrated and tested these systems in a very short 5 weeks allowing the contractor to meet their obligations with the Department of Defense.