The Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (Zh?nghuá Mínguó Guófángbù)) announced Wednesday that Taiwan has signed a contract with the United States to purchase six sets of MS-110 multispectral airborne reconnaissance pods. The ministry said the $343 million (NT$9.63 billion) purchasing contract with the U.S. took effect on July 8, and the system will be deployed in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, by March 15, 2029. The contract was signed between Taiwan’s Defense Mission in the U.S. and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which handles U.S. relations with Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties.
Collins Aerospace MS-110 represents the next generation of the widely deployed DB-110 dual band airborne reconnaissance system providing day and night-time, wide area, long-rang imagery coverage. MS-110 integrates seamlessly into the existing DB-110 system CONOPS and architecture, employing common ground support equipment. The sensor is compatible with carriage on advanced fighters, C-130s, MPA class aircraft, ISR business jets and MALE UAVs such as MQ-9. The MS-110 airborne reconnaissance system is an important advancement over the 3rd generation DB-110 providing new multi-spectral detection capabilities.
Multispectral imagery is defined as sensor data collected simultaneously from three or more spectral regions or bands. The same scene is imaged in all the spectral bands, with each spectral image assigned a display color and overlaid to form a multi-spectral composite image. The MS-110 enables the end-user to see ‘true color’ and to also discriminate between subtle features of a target that a traditional gray scale image cannot. Most importantly, by combining select three bands into certain composite views analysts gain unique knowledge of individual scenes enabling important military related analytical applications.
As part of an end-to-end ISR system, the Collins Aerospace SCI-Toolset suite of imagery exploitation software tools is specially configured to gain maximum benefit from the MS-110’s unique capabilities. The simultaneous multi-band imagery collection provided by the MS-110 is a battlefield discriminator that can facilitate enhanced target discrimination and change detection while defeating enemy camouflage, concealment and deception (CC&D), and providing detailed maritime and littoral surveillance. Imagery exploitation software designed to rapidly leverage the unique features of MS-110 imagery.
