Alliance Ground Surveillance
How did it evolve?
NATO has been working on the development and procurement of an AGS capability for over a decade.
Topics
Eng.
/ Fr.
Airborne ground surveillance during NATO operations in the Balkans in the 1990s was provided by the US JSTARS and French Horizon systems.
The programme was put back on track during a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in September 2001. NATO member countries agreed to develop an Alliance-owned and operated core AGS capability which would be operational by 2010.
The November 2002 Prague Summit of Alliance Heads of State and Government was also a significant event for the AGS programme. Just before the Summit, the National Armaments Directors of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States signed a statement of intent to design and build Transatlantic Cooperative AGS Radar as the sensor for AGS. The resulting radar would also be used to meet individual national requirements.
Two industrial consortia, the Transatlantic Industrial Proposed Solution (TIPS), since renamed the Transatlantic Industrial Partnership for Surveillance and including the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), Galileo Avionica, General Dynamics Canada, Indra, Northrop Grumman and Thales, and the Cooperative Transatlantic AGS Solution, including Raytheon, Alenia Marconi Systems and Siemens, offered unsolicited proposals to meet the agreed NATO requirement for AGS.
Definition studies outlining the operational, technical, cost and schedule details of their respective proposals were provided by each consortium. These were evaluated and on 1 April 2004, the AGS Steering Committee decided that a solution based on the TIPS proposal would best meet their needs. That decision was endorsed by the Conference of National Armaments Directors on 16 April 2004.
On 28 April 2005, NATO signed a 23 million euro contract with the TIPS consortium for the definition phase of the project.
On 25 October 2006, the Conference of National Armaments Directors gave the green light for negotiations to begin with industry on the 500 million euro design and development contract. This will last for approximately two years and will be followed by the two-year acquisition phase, which will be divided into engineering and manufacturing development and the actual acquisition.
