James Edge, Brussels

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

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 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. Photo:private

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.

NATO AGS Global Hawk scanning an Area of Interest

photo: NAGSMA

Air Segment The Air Segment includes Unmanned Air Vehicles, based on US Global Hawk RQ 4B, Block 40 and Air Vehicle Mission Command and Control (AVMC2) Entities in Fixed and Deployable configurations. The unmanned air entities provide a standoff ground surveillance capability, primarily in the form of GMTI data and SAR imagery. The users will be provided with data for situational awareness, targeting, battle damage assessment, and other ISR capabilities via both line-of-sight (LOS) and beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) communications links.

Ground Segment The Ground Segment, largely developed by European industry partners, includes various General Ground Station (GGS) Entities in Mobile (MGGS) and Transportable (TGGS) Configurations, Maritime Mission Module (MMM) and Fixed Mission Operations Support (MOS) Entity that have capabilities to support command and/or operations. Each GGS entity will have the capability to support additional AGS Core users via Remoteable Workstations (RWSs). Ground entities will support users from strategic to tactical echelons. Each GGS entity will have the capability to request, receive, process, store, correlate, display, analyse, and exploit MTI and SAR data as well as other sensor data and exploited products, and will support dissemination of data and information into connected interoperable NATO and/or National systems.

Support Segment AGS Core Support Entities will consist of facilities, installations, and equipment needed to support the air, ground and mission operations support entities, including training of the UAV C2 operators, Ground Mission Simulator Training and other necessary personnel. Sigonella AB in Sicily was chosen as the main operating base.

Execution of the AGS Core Capability Contract With the signature of the AGS Core Capability Contract, the 60 months, Firm Fixed Price (FFP) Contract execution formally started with the first formal Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) conducted in August 2012. The TIM acted as a Post Award Conference from the Technical and Logistics perspectives, establishing expectations for the execution of the contract. Contractually, there were four major event milestones conducted during this period, the Programme Management Review (PMR) #1, System Requirements Review (SRR) and the Post Award Baseline Review (PABR) / PMR #2 (concurrently). The year closed with both NAGSMA and Industry working to address the discrepancies in the data deliverables provided for both the SRR and PABR. In 2013, two major events from the Contract execution are scheduled, the System Design Review (SDR), which is an incremental effort that started in April 2013 and finished in May 2013 to describe the system architecture down to all the functional elements of the system and the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), which further details the design allowing “make or buy” decisions along with selection of re-useable solutions, products and further supplier selections. This will be the basis for finalizing developmental planning supporting the Critical Design Review (CDR) in May 2014 and the start of formal production. Notably, production of aircraft number one began in August. At the end of the year 2013, contract execution was progressing on schedule and on budget.