The latest newsworthy King Air is the Boeing RAMIS, a modular multi role system. In an interview for a trade magazine Mike Ferguson from Boeing said; "There are five things you have to think about when building an ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] aircraft.
These are:
What is it that I am trying to collect data on (is it a truck, person, ship, or command post);
What does this target do that differentiates itself from the background and allows me to find it, and what data am I trying to collect on that target;
What is the terrain – mountainous (a radar won’t work, so you need a sensor that looks directly down) or flat lowlands (where radar or wide-area surveillance [WAS] detection systems do work);
What is the vegetation – is the target in the open or under a triple jungle canopy (which requires [LIght Detection And Ranging] LIDAR or foliage-penetration radar);
and how big is the search area – is it a city or the Pacific Ocean?
Modularity and reconfigurability of systems and sensors is a key feature of RAMIS. You can fly a different sortie against a different target in the morning and evening, and change the aircraft’s configuration to match that.
In order to fulfil this multi-INT mission set, RAMIS employs a suite of communications intelligence (COMINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), and signals intelligence (SIGINT) sensors fitted in an extended nose section and an underbelly ‘canoe’ fairing divided into four under-fuselage payload bays.
In the extended nose section, the modular mission equipment comprises the option of an L-3 Wescam MX-15Di and -15HDi retractable electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) sensor turret, a Thales UK Ku-band I-Master Wide Area Airborne Surveillance (WAAS) turret, and a ground moving target indicator/synthetic aperture radar (GMTI/SAR).
The underbelly ‘canoe’ fairing can house a gimballed EO/IR turret, WAAS equipment, Wide Area Motion Imaging (WAMI), LIDAR systems; FOLiage PENetrating (FOPEN) radar, GMTI/SAR, hyper-spectral sensors, ELINT/SIGINT systems, communications systems, and datalinks.
A dorsal satellite communications (SATCOM) radome is also fitted to the upper body of the aircraft.
Boeing have positioned RAMIS between their Scan Eagle range and the Challenger 650 Maritime Surveillance Aircraft
Many readers will have heard of the Gorgon Stare Wide Area Persistent Surveillance system, RAMIS have been tested bit a similar system from CRI called Lodestar.
LodestarVideo
Although Lodestar might be very smart it cannot challenge the
Vehicle And Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER) for having a cool name! VADER has been carried by Islanders, Predators and Twin Otters in addition to King Airs.Think of it as JSTARS for people.
Source: Think Defence
Low Cost Manned ISTAR - Think Defence
