Constant Hawk

It flew over 66 thousand flight hours in Iraq on five aircraft and is directly and indirectly credited with producing the intelligence data that dramatically reduced IED production and deployment.

[1] The Army first deployed Constant Hawk in 2006 as part of a Quick Reaction Capability to help combat enemy ambushes and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[4] Initial work on Constant Hawk began in the early 2000s (decade) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as part of the Sonoma Persistent Surveillance Program, a U.S. Department of Energy effort to monitor nuclear proliferation.

In 2009, BAE Systems provided an additional, infrared payload for Constant Hawk called the Airborne Wide Area Persistent Surveillance Sensor (AWAPSS).

[3] In 2013, the MIT sensor MASIVS was deployed by Constant Hawk increasing pixel counts by an order of magnitude and providing full color imagery processed in real-time on board the aircraft.