THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
A vital capability that has long been lacking will soon be made available to NATO
Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) Capability will be ready soon by Colonel (ret) James Edge, General Manager NAGSMA, Brussels
The idea of a NATO owned and operated Alliance Ground Surveillance Core capability has been around for two decades. It all started in 1992, when the need for a strategic ground surveillance capability was identified in NATO in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. In the course of the years, a number of different tracks and solutions were proposed and pursued, but eventually ended up being abandoned for a variety of reasons. The current approach started to take its shape in the margins of the NATO Summit in Chicago, where, on 20 May 2012 a procurement contract for the AGS system was signed, paving the way for the delivery of a vital capability that will be made available to all NATO member nations. The AGS Programme will provide NATO with a complete and integrated ground surveillance capability that would offer the Alliance and its nations unrestricted and unfiltered access to ground surveillance data in near-real-time and in an interoperable manner. AGS will also contribute to all three NATO Strategic Concept core tasks through using its Swath & Spot Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and its Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) capabilities to collect information that will provide political and military decision-makers with a comprehensive picture of the situation on the ground. The system The AGS Core Capability being financed by 15 Nations will be composed of an air segment comprising airborne radar sen-
NATO AGS operations scenario
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James E. Edge has been General Manager for the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) Management Agency (NAGSMA) since 21 January 2013. He holds a MS in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, an MBA from Golden Gate University and a BS in Engineering Technology from Texas A&M University. Jim Photo:private Edge retired from the United States Air Force in 2005 with the rank of Colonel, having served in the Pentagon as the Deputy Director for Strategic Aircraft Systems in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Prior to taking up his duties with NAGSMA, Jim Edge was the Director of International Business of a US Company and before that, he was Deputy General Manager of NACMA in Brussels.
sors and Command and Control and a ground segment comprising fixed, transportable and mobile ground stations for data exploitation and dissemination, all seamlessly interconnected through high-performance data links. In addition, it comprises a support segment which will allow initial training, maintenance and logistics to be performed. The support segment will also contain information to baseline the Life Cycle Support to support the military user, which will be funded by the full Alliance.
photo: NAGSMA
