HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Air Force Lt. Gen. Sid Clarke, director of the Air National Guard, recently visited the Alabama Air National Guard's 226th Combat Communications Group as part of a rededication ceremony of Alabama Air Guard's Eagle Vision 6 site at Redstone Arsenal here.
Several dignitaries joined Clarke, including Army Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, adjutant general of the Alabama National Guard, as well as others.
The rededication of the site was in honor of the 226th CCG fielding the Next Generation Data Acquisition Segment at the Eagle Vision 6 site. The new equipment consists of a new ground station and antenna, storage arrays and network devices that make the deployable ground station capable of downlinking unclassified imagery directly from commercial satellites.
That has allowed the Eagle Vision program to provide greater support in response to floods, tornados and other natural disasters as well as missions throughout the world. In the past, Eagle Vision has provided support services to the response to natural disasters, including the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and multiple tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and wildfires throughout the United States and around the world.
The new equipment allows for greater support for contingency operations.
"These new capabilities give Eagle Vision 6 the capability to access the next generation of satellite imagery with greater resolution and speed," said Jerry Brooks, director of the Eagle Vision Program Office. "The end result will be that the warfighter or emergency responder will have quicker and better access to information to accomplish their mission."
The events at the site included a ribbon-cutting ceremony and mission overview brief to numerous military visitors and city and state officials. Eagle Vision 6 has worked closely with the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command at Redstone Arsenal since 2008 to process imagery.