Unmanned eye in Iraq's sky gives the Marines a spy

[seriousstan]

Somewhere above Iraq, a 4-foot-long robotic airplane with a 10-foot wingspan flies over the positions of enemy insurgents and sends real-time video images to Marines on the ground.

At an altitude of 1,500 feet, the camera aboard the ScanEagle unmanned aircraft is capable of making out the facial expressions of enemy soldiers detecting their cigarettes or even seeing the steam rising from coffee.

ScanEagle was developed and built by the St. Louis-based defense unit of Boeing Co. and the Insitu Group of Bingen, Wash. It can fly as long as 15 hours at a time while burning less than two gallons of fuel.

Since being deployed over the summer, ScanEagle aircraft have logged more than 1,000 hours in Iraq on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions for the Marines.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/story/988857703736038D86256F590037B449?OpenDocument&Headline=Unmanned+eye+in+Iraq