Army hunted a Washington sniper using civilian-style spy planes at 25,000 feet
By Miriam Adler ·
Those opposing preferred political orders in South America were watched by civilian airliners before the Army deployed the RC-7B against a domestic sniper.
The de Havilland Canada Dash 7 was designed as a commuter airplane, a four-engine turboprop built for the efficiency of regional travel and the ability to land on austere runways. But according to a program description mirrored by the FAS Intelligence Resource Program, the Army saw a different utility for the airframe. They didn't want a commuter; they wanted a "low profile intelligence aircraft."
This was the birth of the Airborne Reconnaissance Low (ARL) program. The Army stripped the civilian identity from the Dash 7 and replaced it with a suite of sensors designed to listen, watch, and map. The result was a platform that could carry a 2,500-pound mission payload and stay airborne for eight hours, turning a regional airliner into a silent observer of the landscape below.
"Promote-Democracy"
The impetus for the ARL came from a requirement submitted by the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). The document states the platform was intended to support "nation-building, counternarcotics, and promote-democracy missions" within SOUTHCOM's area of responsibility. These goals were later reclassified as "stability and support operations or operations other than war."
In the language of the military, "promoting democracy" often translates to the systematic collection of intelligence on those who might oppose the preferred political order. The ARL was designed to do this with a "low political profile," a phrase that suggests the goal was not just to spy, but to do so without leaving a visible footprint that could cause diplomatic friction. It is the surveillance of the unseen, conducted by a plane that looks, from a distance, like a harmless regional transport.
Document imagery from irp.fas.org From the files: irp.fas.org
Howard AFB, Panama
To meet these requirements, the Army developed two distinct versions of the aircraft. The ARL-C (designated the EO-5B) was the ears of the operation, focusing on signals intelligence (SIGINT). It utilized a system capable of intercepting and finding the direction of high-frequency, very-high frequency, and ultrahigh frequency transmissions.
Then there was the ARL-I (the O-5A), the eyes. This variant carried a first-generation forward-looking infrared camera turret, a day-imaging system, and an infrared line scanner. These sensors allowed the crew to peer through darkness and weather to track movements on the ground. Three of these interim systems were fielded to the 470th MIBN(LI) at Howard AFB in Panama.
By the mid-1990s, the program evolved into the ARL-M (the RC-7B), a multifunction platform that combined both ears and eyes. The ARL-M integrated the most potent technology available, including the Raytheon HISAR radar. According to the FAS record, HISAR leveraged the same family of radars used on the U-2 spy plane and the B-2 Bomber. This gave the RC-7B synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities with six-meter resolution, allowing it to create detailed images of the ground regardless of cloud cover or nightfall.
Document imagery from irp.fas.org From the files: irp.fas.org
8-Millimeter Videotape
The human element of this surveillance was intimate and immediate. On the ARL-I, two onboard operators could record the imagery of the targets they were tracking on 8-millimeter videotape. Alternatively, they could transmit the feed "live" to a ground forces commander using RS-170 video imagery via a downlink to portable receivers.
While the aircraft was equipped with high-tech defenses—including the AN/APR-39A(V1) radar warning receiver and the M-130 flare and chaff dispenser—its primary strength was its invisibility. It operated at a service ceiling of 25,000 feet, high enough to be unnoticed by the casual observer but low enough for its sensors to maintain a lethal level of detail.
This transition from foreign "stability operations" to domestic application happened with a suddenness the records barely pause to acknowledge. The program, which spent its early years tracking movements in South America and replacing the Mohawk (OV-1D) in Korea, eventually found its way home.
An October 16, 2002, entry in the FAS resource references a report by Dan Verton in Computerworld, noting that the RC-7B Airborne Reconnaissance Low would be brought to bear in the hunt for the Washington area sniper.