Alliance Ground Surveillance
What does this mean in practice?
Just as NATO’s AWACS radar aircraft monitor Alliance airspace, the AGS will be able to look down at what is happening on the ground.
Topics
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It will provide situational awareness before and during NATO operations. This is an essential capability for political decision makers and military planners, and will be a key enabler for NATO’s cutting-edge Response Force.
With an estimated cost of 4 billion euros, AGS will be one of the most expensive acquisition programmes ever undertaken by the Alliance, and one of the most sophisticated, technologically.
The system and its capabilities
The AGS will consist of a number of manned platforms, unmanned platforms, and ground control stations in different configurations. The manned platform will be based on an Airbus commercial airliner and the unmanned platform on the Global Hawk high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicle. Both the manned and the unmanned platforms will carry the Transatlantic Cooperative AGS Radar (TCAR) sensor.
The exact capabilities of the system will largely depend on the TCAR sensor, which is currently under development, but in general it will be able to detect and identify individual vehicles and if they are moving, to track them.
The system will be interoperable with national airborne stand-off ground surveillance systems belonging to NATO countries, forming with them a system of systems.
