Gorgon Stare Gorgon Stare is a video capture technology developed by the United States military . It is a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone . The US Air Force calls it " wide - area surveillance sensor system " . Background . The system is capable of capturing motion imagery of an entire city , which can then be analyzed by humans or an artificial intelligence , such as the Mind ' s Eye project being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . This motion imagery is not considered video as it is collected at fewer hertz than the standard definition of video . TV - like quality of video is 24 – 60 Hz . Gorgon Stare needs to utilize a system of tagging and metadata to be fully effective . The Air Force plans to deliver one system in 2011 , another in 2012 , and a third in 2014 , though they will not enter service until accepted by the commander in the theatre of operations . " Gorgon Stare " has been under development for more than two years and it is designed to download 65 different images to a variety of military users for analysis ; this is what is referred to as “ wide - area surveillance . ” Development . " Gorgon Stare " is being developed and tested on the MQ - 9 Reaper at Eglin Air Force Base , Florida . with the 53rd Wing . These sensors pods have been in development since 2009 by the Air Force ’ s Big Safari group and Sierra Nevada Corp . In January 2011 , it was announced that the program wasn ' t performing to expectations , and included faults such as " a large black triangle moving throughout the image , " due to failure to combine the images taken by the multiple cameras , inferior image quality compared to older systems , a problematic night - vision system , inability to track people on the surface , and delays of up to eighteen seconds in sending data to the ground . In response , the Air Force said that several of the flaws had been fixed since the report detailing the issues had been written , that the system was never designed to offer high - resolution imagery over a wide area , and that in some areas the testing was " not sufficiently constructed to objectively evaluate the capabilities of the system , " according to an anonymous source involved with the program . Development costs are in the $ 15 million range . This sensor will photograph an area with a four - kilometer radius underneath the MQ - 9 Reaper . The Reaper can fly both day and night operations from 12 angles ; as reported by Robert Marlin , a technical adviser for the Air Force . The Eglin AFB test revealed numerous problems , one such problem was a faulty coordinate grid for the chipped - out imagery . Another problem was a floating black triangle in the scenes . A third problem was an incompatibility with the handheld Rover 5 computers . Phase two . Phase two will integrate processes of tracking algorithms from the ARGUS - IS system . Argus is a system of tools developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . Deployment plans . Lt . Gen . Craig Koziol , the director of the ISR Task Force , reported in a news conference that " Gorgon Stare " is planned to be deployed in December 2011 . Name origin . The " Gorgon " was a monster from Greek mythology whose stare could turn any who viewed it to stone . Presumably the reference is to the Gorgon Stare ' s ability to freeze a scene in time for analysts to later view . Similar systems . A similar system was planned to be installed on the Blue Devil blimp , a spy blimp developed for the US Air Force . In 2006 , a similar wide - area surveillance system , the Constant Hawk , was being tested by the US Army . Also , in 2007 , the Marine Corps tested an upgrade of the Constant Hawk , called Angel Fire . Both of these sensors were mounted under aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan Wars .