A Marine stands ready to launch a ScanEagle in Iraq. The UAV was developed by
Insitu, of Bingen, Wash. As of June 2007, ScanEagles have logged more than 40,000 flight hours, including the missions they've flown for the Marines and the U.S. Navy.
Over several days in late June, a 40-pound civilian version of the UAV, owned by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, logged 18 hours of flight time in Alaska, as part of a campaign to map the growth of wildfire fuels, Insitu said last week. In that time, it collected 30 color images per second of about 43 square miles of terrain. Those images will help officials plan prescribed fires that are intended to reduce the risk of blazes being set by live-fire training exercises run by the Army and Air Force.
