SAN DIEGO - What is the result when Air National Guard members from Hawaii, South Carolina, California and Alabama collaborate routinely? You get the power of space delivered to fellow Guard members, our sister services and first responders in support of natural disasters and military contingency operations.
Over the last few months, the Air Guard members from Eagle Vision (EV)-3 (CANG), EV-4 (SCANG), EV-5 (HIANG) and EV-6 (ALANG) have been downlinking imagery and radar products from commercial space-based satellite sources in support of tornado relief, firefighting, flooding and hurricane preparations. The Airmen from Eagle Vision units work within what they call the "current news cycle".
If the news is reporting it, the Airmen are standing by ready to respond. They coordinate with commercial satellite vendors, the National Intelligence Geospatial Agency (NGA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other organizations in order to ensure relevant space-based imagery is available for the affected area.
The unique Eagle Vision Air Guard units are DoD's only Deployable, Commercial Imagery Ground Station. They come self-sustained as an operational unit with their own satellite antenna, imagery and radar processing equipment and power generation. Currently the Eagle Vision units are being fielded with a more capable downlink antenna and improved processing equipment in a self-contained shelter. With a downlink range of over 2,500 kilometers, these Eagle Vision units can downlink in a rapid and responsive manner, Multi-Spectral Imagery (MSI), Panchromatic and RADAR products that are available to federal, state, local and tribal organizations and individuals.
A recent example of this support was when EV-3, stationed just north of San Diego, was tasked to provide support to the wild fires threatening the major metropolitan area. The Airmen quickly responded and soon had space-based imagery scenes that were made available to those supporting firefighting operations. A similar request was made also to EV-3 in support of the Funny River fire in Alaska, to highlight a few.
At these locations, the space-based imagery collected by the Airmen were provided to U.S. and allied military partners for use.