AGS Gets Off The Ground

The first of five NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) Global Hawks made its maiden flight over the weekend as Airbus Defense and Space prepared to deliver the first mobile general ground stations (MGGS) for the system.

The AGS Global Hawk took off from Palmdale Air Base in California Dec. 19, climbed to 40,000 feet and landing at Edwards Air Force Base two and a half hours later.

Airbus Defense and Space presented the first MGGS to NATO, AGS participating nations and prime contractor Northrop Grumman in Friederichshafen, southern Germany, Dec. 21. The AGS ground segment will comprise six MGGS units, each of which is integrated into two containers transportable by truck, rail, aircraft or ship. The stations will exploit radar images from AGS Global Hawks and other interoperable allied command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. MGGS deliveries to AGS main operating base Sigonella in Sicily are scheduled to start before the end of the year.

NATO points out that the AGS Global Hawks it is acquiring will be the first alliance-owned and operated aircraft since the E-3A airborne warning and control system (AWACs) fleet was created in the early 1980s. One of the first articles I ever wrote in the late 1980s was about a Northrop Grumman proposal to create a similar fleet of Joint Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft. The proposal evolved into a mixed fleet of manned and unmanned systems and finally into the completely unmanned system that is now being acquired.

Canada, Denmark, France and Poland withdrew from AGS, but Denmark and Poland later rejoined what is now a 15-nation program, which also includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United States.