NATO radar-aircraft project gains broader political clout.

The NATO alliance, for more than a decade, has been fussing over the details of how to deploy a network of ground surveillance aircraft.

According to the latest plan, NATO wants a system in place by 2010. Although the schedule is ambitious, experts said, there are reasons to believe the alliance is now serious about making the financial and political commitment to a program that will cost several billion dollars, and likely will push the traditional boundaries of industrial cooperation.

An expanded role by NATO countries in peacekeeping missions and a desire to patch up fractured trans-Atlantic relations are among the motivating factors likely to spur the development of NATO's Airborne Ground Surveillance system, sources said.

The $4 billion AGS will be made up of manned and unmanned aircraft, equipped with an advanced imaging radar and moving target indicator. Two industry teams are competing for a February 2004 contract award. Their proposals are due in November.

The original plan for AGS was to purchase JSTARS aircraft (the U.S. joint surveillance target acquisition radar system), but that option was derailed, because it did not include enough workshare for European nations.

NATO solved that problem by mandating that any AGS industry proposal include an adequate work-share arrangement, proportional to the funding that a NATO country contributes to the program. Both teams wing for AGS have strong U.S. and European participation.

"Looking at NATO's AGS initiative today, after more than 10 years of debate, it survives at the top of NATO's collective acquisition list," said Charles L. Barry, a defense and international relations consultant. "Everyone agreed long ago it was needed, but disagreed on whose system and subsystems to buy."

Coming up with enough funds, Barry said, "has been the other big stumbling block."

Given NATO's track record with big-ticket programs, it is likely that the AGS delivery date will slip by a few years and that the budget will be tens of millions of dollars short, Barry said. Nevertheless, the outlook for AGS is promising, particularly since the program got high-level endorsement at the NATO Summit in Prague last year.

"Now, we see two competitors composed of transatlantic partners ... and we have the impetus of Prague beginning to bring a trickle of increased defense spending," he noted. Eventually, he said, even Germany will spend more on defense.

More importantly, Barry said, NATO has another pressing reason to make good on AGS--its pending, open-ended mission in Afghanistan that begins this month. "Initially, they will lean on national systems, but a NATO capability has a solid rationale," he said. "If NATO ends up in Iraq as well, it could surprise us and even accelerate AGS ahead of schedule."

The success or failure of the AGS program could be viewed as a litmus test for the strength of NATO as a military alliance, said Jeffrey P. Bialos, former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs.

"If we are not going to do this kind of program together, it would be very telling as to the future of the alliance as a true security framework for fighting high-intensity warfare," he said. "For us to be interoperable, we need to be able to see the same battlefield picture, track the same targets."

A collaborative industrial effort of this scale also could go a long way to repair international relations that were damaged in the wake of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Bialos noted. "AGS may be a fence-mending exercise."

Bialos believes that AGS has favorable odds. "There is a good deal of traction behind the program," he said. "The NATO senior leadership is very supportive. The United States has been very supportive. I think there is a good chance that that program can move forward."

Surveillance Platforms

Although the AGS concept has yet to be defined, industry sources said it probably will include between four and eight radar-equipped jets, and up to nine unmanned air vehicles.

Two competitors are expected to submit proposals in November. One consortium is called TIPS (Transatlantic Industrial Proposed Solution), made up of EADS, Galileo Avionica, Northrop Grumman, Thales, General Dynamics Canada and Indra of Spain.

The other team is called CTAS (Cooperative Trans-Atlantic AGS system), led by the Raytheon Co. and BAE Systems. The CTAS consortium also includes other undisclosed participants. "We are in advanced discussions with many partners.

At the right time, we will reveal who these partners are," said Robert Bushnell, who leads Raytheon's AGS program.

The TIPS offering has the Airbus 321 jet as the manned platform and the Global Hawk UAV (or a European version called Euro Hawk) as the unmanned system.

CTAS is proposing a Bombardier Global Express business jet and an unspecified mix of UAVs. "Our UAV strategy is competition sensitive," said Bushnell. "We are offering several solutions to let them pick what they want."

Both teams are required to use the same radar--which has yet to be developed--called the Transatlantic Cooperative AGS Radar. TCAR combines the U.S. Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) and Europe's Stand-off Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar demonstrator (SOSTAR-X).

The manned aircraft and the UAVs would use the same sensor.

TIPS representatives said they believed their offering will better satisfy NATO requirements, because the medium-size Airbus jet is large enough to accommodate onboard command-and-control systems.

The business jet proposed by Raytheon and BAE Systems "is too small and has no battle management capability on board," said Peter Bernsmann, EADS senior manager for NATO AGS.

Raytheon, meanwhile, contends that the business jet is a more viable solution for NATO. The United Kingdom chose that aircraft for its ground surveillance program, the Astor. "Our offering leverages our experience from Astor," Bushnell said.

Unlike the TIPS concept, the Raytheon-BAE system performs very limited onboard command and control functions, and relies on advanced ground stations and wi&band datalinks to manage and process the data. "Research we've done and conversations with NATO countries [reveal that] the vast majority prefers the way we do it," Bushnell said.

The Airbus 321 aircraft, he said, never before has been modified for this mission. "We are using a platform that has already been engineered for this mission.... It is much less risky."