Hughes Aircraft 720.....A Special Project F/E

A Boeing 720, I worked on for Huges Aircraft. You can see the MAGIC eye on the aircraft just forward of the wing.
The AIRMS ProgramAIRMS is a system developed by Raytheon and the Hughes Aircraft Company for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Sensor technology Office (aka DARPA STO) to enable the detection, through infrared imaging, identification and engagement of targets (both ground-based and airborne threat vehicles such as aircraft and cruise missles) at ranges greater than 250 miles from an airborne platform operating at altitudes between 15,000 and 42,000 feet. The AIRMS stretched the envelope in the science of infrared imaging, and led to a number of important developments in the realm of infrared search and track, or IRSAT. The sensor itself, with an aperture of 24 inches, was much larger than any which had been flown before, and required a high degree of stability, as it was so sensitive and collected such high-resolution data.
One of the main goals of the AIRMS program as flown on Embraceable Annie was to collect a database of imagery to be used to “develop and validate target detection and clutter rejection algorithms” (Bender, 1995). In other words, to be able to detect the IR signature of a target at a great distance, you need to be able to filter the real target out of all the background cloud and clutter data. The data collected by Annie was then examined in regards to its IR phenomenology and the results of this study were then used to develop and validate target detection and clutter rejection algorithms, to be used in the development of future tactical IR sensors.