SPARKS, Nev., Oct. 18, 2011 — (PRNewswire) — The United States Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Foundation has selected the SNC-led Gorgon Stare team as its 2011 Industry Achievement Award recipients. This prestigious annual award recognizes outstanding accomplishments in GEOINT tradecraft by an individual or team from industry. The 2011 award was presented to SNC and the Gorgon Stare team today at the 2011 GEOINT Symposium at San Antonio, Texas. The USAF's Gorgon Stare Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance System, developed by the SNC-led, best-of-breed industry team under the USAF/Big Safari rapid acquisition program, has been flying operational missions in Afghanistan since April. Hosted on a USAF/General Atomics long-dwell MQ-9 Reaper unmanned air vehicle, each GS orbit provides uninterrupted, 24/7 visible and IR coverage of city-sized areas, providing real-time motion video directly to theater and tactical forces engaged in combat and support operations. GS motion video is simultaneously provided in 3 coverage tiers:  (1) The full field of regard; (2) In multiple subviews of the full field of view, and; (3) In best-resolution tactical chipouts. These products are all provided in realtime to tactical and theater forces via the Gorgon Stare Ground Station/Exploitation Cell with best-resolution GS chipouts provided directly and in real-time to ROVER users engaged in ground operations. In addition to its primary tactical consumers, this game-changing system also provides these products in near-realtime to the DCGS enterprise for unprecedentedly rapid exploitation and forensics analysis support. Finally, the entire mission data set, which is recorded onboard the aircraft in machine-lossless format, is provided post-mission for live, long-term archiving and discovery, and additional current exploitation. SNC's market-leading Increment 1 partners include ITT Geospatial Systems, Mercury Federal Systems, MIT/LL, L3Com West, L3 Comcept, Gichner, and AdamWorks. Sierra Nevada Corporation is also currently under Big Safari contract developing the next generation of Gorgon Stare systems. In addition to its Increment 1 partners, the SNC-led Increment 2 team adds BAE Systems as the next-generation visible sensor provider.

About Sierra Nevada Corporation

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is one of America's fastest growing private companies. Under the leadership of CEO Fatih Ozmen and President/CFO Eren Ozmen, SNC employs over 2100 people in 31 locations in 16 states. SNC's seven unique business areas are dedicated to providing leading-edge technology solutions to SNC's customers. For more information visit www.sncorp.com.

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Sierra Nevada Corporation United States Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Foundation Sierra Nevada Corporation Email Contact +1-775-331-0222 Web: http://www.sncorp.com