EYE IN THE SKY: Drone Shadow Crews Practice Unmanned Aerial Surveillance Skills

This is the moment an unmanned Shadow-UAS drone is tested by soldiers of the 1st Det / 104th Brigade End Battalion.

This 12-foot drone with a wing span of 22 feet is a fuel base drone that can return photos and videos to a base point.

The Shadow is launched from a trailer-mounted pneumatic catapult and is recovered with the aid of arresting gear similar to jets on an aircraft carrier.

Its gimbal-mounted, digitally stabilized, liquid nitrogen-cooled electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) camera relays video in real-time via a C-band line-of-sight data link to the ground control station (GCS).

The unmanned drone was launched at Lakehurst Naval Air Station and was flown over the Fort Dix, NJ Range Complex at Ranges 85 and 61 for training and testing.

The RQ-7 Shadow is the result of a continued US Army search for effective battlefield Unmanned Aerial Surveillance.

It is currently used by the United States Army, Australian Army, Swedish Army, Turkish Air Force and Italian Army for reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and battle damage assessment.