Where did the Name Accipiter Come From?
Accipiter Phonetics & Definition
ACCIPITRIDAE
ac•cip•i•tri-dae
Pronunciation: ak-'si-pi-tre-dee
Noun. The family name of birds of prey that includes hawks, eagles, and kites.
ACCIPITER
ac•cip•i•ter
Pronunciation: ak-'sip-i-ter
Hawks of the genus Accipiter are characterized by medium wings and long tails. Species in North America include Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii), Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) and Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis).
The Accipiter - A Bird with Excellent Vision
Of these three Accipiter hawks, it is the Cooper's Hawk that has captured our imagination and best personifies the family of Accipiter® Radars. Cooper’s Hawks are shown in the banner photo above and at right.
Why Accipiter?
Names of birds have often been used to brand surveillance sensors or military aircraft, so it is not unusual that we would seek out the name of a bird to brand our Security, Avian, and Natural Resource Management Radar systems. But why Accipiter? A brief look at some of the key characteristics of our unique radar systems and of Accipiter hawks demonstrate a well made match.
Our radars provide wide-area surveillance, automatically and aggressively searching out a variety of small, maneuvering targets of interest in strong clutter environments. Accipiter hawks behave similarly by flying circular search patterns like a scanning radar. Accipiters aggressively hunt numerous small, maneuvering targets such as small, flying birds and can search them out in cluttered environments such as wooded lots.
Our radar systems are small, agile, covert, and affordable, unlike larger, military and aviation surveillance systems. Unlike larger birds of prey such as the Bald Eagle and the Osprey, Accipiters are adapted for speed and agility, and characterized by relatively medium-length, rounded wings optimized for maneuverability. Acting covertly to surprise its targets, Accipiters often wait in ambush for their prey.
Our radar systems are designed to protect regions of interest and critical infrastructure from selected threats and to provide automatic alerts or advisories for situations of interest. The Accipiter is known to be territorial and to protect its search area from intruders, sounding alarms and taking action when its territorial perimeters are breached.
Our radar processing algorithms and system features are state-of-the-art, individually rare, and not found together in competing systems.
For all of these reasons, the name Accipiter® personifies our sophisticated radar systems.
