Israel has developed a slew of cool sensors for keeping tabs on terrorists -- grenades stuffed with cameras, softball-shaped sensors, mini-drones flown by a Dick Tracey-esque controller.
Defense Update spots an Israeli surveillance tool that I hadn't heard of before: a rifle-mounted, sensor-filled projectile called "Smart Arrow." Shoot it into a wall, and a "video camera is activated, sending live images from the target for up to seven hours."
The Smart Arrow comes with "an option for small explosive heads to assist the projectile embedding in the hardest surfaces," Defense Daily notes. "Once the tip of the Arrow is embedded, the body -- containing a small video camera -- pivots from a ball joint and hangs below the head. Then it begins to transmit live images from the surrounding area to a remote display and control unit."
This... allows the operator to view an "out of sight" area, such as an alley, before friendly ground troops overtake the position--a process that could be dangerous and time consuming, Kattan said.
"It can also be shot into the wall above a window then...[swivel down and] transmit what's going on inside," Gal said.
The display and control unit is small and highly portable and allows the operator to rotate the camera on the Smart Arrow while video is transmitted continuously. The LCD display screen is about six and a half inches in size and the unit can operate for about three hours continuously on a single charge.
The video transmission range is about 300 meters outdoors, and several hundred feet if, for example, the system was shot through a window and embedded in an interior wall or ceiling...
The Arrow can transmit the image to several receivers [and] has a 60-degree field of view with a frame rate of 25 per second and a resolution of 420 TV lines (tvl) in black and white and 320 tvl in color.
A Smart Arrow system includes two projectiles, one control unit and a charger in a rugged transport case.
