New Florence. New Renaissance.: Geospatial applications

I got this email and photo (click to expand) from a friend.

"This is a photo of the Global Hawk UAV that returned from the war zone recently under its own power. (Iraq to Edwards AFB in CA) - Not transported via C5 or C17..... Notice the mission paintings on the fuselage. It's actually over 250 missions.... (and I would suppose 25 air medals). That's a long way for a remotely-piloted aircraft. Think of the technology (and the required quality of the data link to fly it remotely). Not only that but the pilot controlled it from a nice warm control panel at Edwards AFB. It has really long legs -- can stay up for almost 2 days at altitudes above 60k. There is practically no radio chatter because all the guys in the flight are tied together electronically and can see who is targeting whom, and they have AWACS direct input and 360 degree situational awareness from that and other sensors. It can taxi, take off, fly a mission, return, land, and taxi on it's own. No pilot blackouts, no fatigue, no relief tubes, no ejection seats, and best of all, no dead pilots and no POWs."

Of course, what fascinated me was to find out more about the "nice warm control panel" and I found it and the technology behind it in this article (written in 2004 but fascinating in its description of the control panels and communications via satellite, on-ground controllers and so on)

And I thought of all the potential geo-spatial and civilian applications. Sure enough the US Air Force used them in the recent California fires - along with experimental NASA UAV I wrote about last week.