An international industry team led by Northrop Grumman is waiting
for a political go-ahead to start the development of NATO’s
multibillion-dollar Air Ground Surveillance system. Companies on
the team are banking on the Prague Summit in November to give the
project much needed momentum.
Northrop Grumman’s partners include the European conglomerate
EADS and Italy’s Galileo Avionica.
A year ago, all 19 NATO members agreed in principle that an AGS
capability should be fully operational by 2010. The countries committed
to begin studying radar technology options that could be incorporated
in the national ground surveillance systems, said Northrop Grumman’s
John Campbell.
“It would be a government-to-government cooperative radar,
which would maximize the use of available technologies from the
United States and Europe,” he told reporters at the Farnborough
International Air Show. “It will get rid of the black-box
approach, where they [countries] don’t have all the information.”
To make the 2010 deadline, Campbell said, the acquisition of the
AGS system needs to start as soon as possible, so there can be a
flight test by 2008. “If a contract is awarded in 2003 we
should be able to get it done,” he said.
Technology sharing is a cornerstone of this program, said Campbell.
It will require “interoperability with the whole surveillance
and reconnaissance community,” he said.
The Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD) designated
NATO AGS as an urgent requirement in 1992, but only in the spring
of 2001 was the proposal elevated to the prime ministers.
“There is an urgent need for industry to offer a single solution
to the governments,” said Campbell. Northrop submitted its
Transatlantic Industrial Proposed Solution (TIPS) before the April
2002 CNAD.
“The NATO requirement has been in existence since 1992 and
it tells you what they need, but not how to get there,” said
Campbell.
The acquisition phase needs some level of government-to-government
agreement, said Campbell. Industry and NATO nations have spent $30
million on studies and analysis, Campbell said. The technical solution
“is now at hand.”
As a platform for the surveillance system, TIPS is proposing a
mid-sized jet, from the EADS Airbus 320 series. The team likes Airbus’
aircraft fuel-efficiency and worldwide availability of support services.
Also, its fuel capacity enables long-range, long-endurance missions,
said Campbell.
NATO leaders will have to determine the number of aircraft they
want to purchase. The original AGS plan required 12 aircraft and
24 ground stations, but Northrop is recommending six aircraft and
24 ground stations.
Several NATO nations have yet to articulate their requirements
for the AGS. Campbell said he worried that some countries would
decide to get their own platforms, “and there would be a hodgepodge.”
For example, Germany wants the Euro Hawk unmanned aircraft as the
platform for the AGS program.
The TIPS industry team suggested, as a baseline capability, a mobile
ground station, a transportable ground station equipped with advanced
communications and data processing systems. The stations would operate
in a network, and would be connected with the aircraft via line-of-sight
and beyond-line-of-sight data links, such as Link 11, 16, 22 and
UHF satellite communications.
Beyond the minimum core capability, TIPS has looked at additional
NATO assets that could be incorporated, such as other fixed wing
aircraft, unmanned vehicles, ground stations and helicopters. The
aircraft would monitor and distribute a common operational ground
picture to all participating nations and be interoperable with NATO
and national assets, such as the Euro Hawk derivative of the Global
Hawk, the French Horizon helicopter-borne radar, the U.K. airborne
surveillance system called Astor (Airborne Standoff Radar) and the
U.S. Air Force Joint STARS ground radar aircraft.
TIPS is proposing a high-power, multi-mode two-dimensional electronically
scanned array that would perform simultaneous synthetic aperture
radar and moving-target indicator functions. This technology would
be useful in tracking and identifying ground vehicles, as well as
for detecting low-flying aircraft, rotating antennas and ships.
The TIPS radar technology would dovetail the U.S. next-generation
radar for Joint STARS, called the MP-RTIP. However, he cautioned,
“the radar for NATO is not an MP-RTIP modified radar, but
it is a cooperatively designed radar.” The MP-RTIP technology
is considered too sensitive for export by the United States. Discussions
are under way between the United States and NATO’s SOSTAR
(Standoff Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar) program, to
establish transatlantic radar cooperation. The United Kingdom, additionally,
intends to contribute technology from Astor, said Campbell.
The TIPS would be NATO-owned and operated and the technology could
not be exported to non-NATO nations, he added.
The new NATO members, to be admitted into the alliance at the Prague
summit, are not expected to have the financial resources to contribute
to the program.