the military aspect of POET has been downplayed recently, with the "secrecy" being tied to NDA on the commercial front.

you have to remember that DoD funded early works, with BAE in tow; that connection isn't lost with AM being a shoulder-tap away from the White House.

what has that got to do with image sensors?

perhaps the NDA "secrecy" may be grounded in the non-commercial side of the house.

in 2012, NRO donated two unused (brand new, still in the box) KH-11B digital imaging reconnaisance satellites to NASA for civilian use (NRO knew they had NROL-65 and so on in their pocket, so they didn't need FIA anymore).

after receiving them from ITT Exelis Geospatial Systems (Rochester NY) where they were stored, according to NASA, it was discovered that the KH11's were vastly superior to Hubble, and had an original pricetag of about $5 Billion for the pair.

the imaging cameras could clearly resolve centimetre-sized objects from a distance of over 320 kilometers away.

so, you have to ask if that is what they're declassifying and giving away for free, because its technology is operationally obsolete in their eyes, then

... what are they actually using?

Powered-by-POET, indeed.

Perhaps if they told us, they'd have to kill us.

;-)

GLAL,

R.