Source defense-unmanned.com

(Source: NATO; issued July, 28 2014)

BRUSSELS --- NAGSMA General Manager, Jim Edge, and NAGSMO Chairman, Erling Wang announced that the Fuselage of the first NATO AGS UAV has been completed at Northrop-Grumman’s plant at Moss Point (Mississippi, USA). The fuselage is now on its way to Palmdale, California in order to complete the production.

The AGS Core will be an integrated system consisting of an air segment and a ground segment and related support systems. The air segment consists of five Global Hawk Block 40 high-altitude, long-endurance UAVs.

The UAVs will be equipped with a state-of-the-art, Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) ground surveillance radar sensor, as well as an extensive suite of line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight, long-range, wideband data links.

The air segment will also contain the UAV flight control stations (AVMC2), which will be located at the AGS main operating base at Sigonella Air Base, Italy.

The ground segment will provide an interface between the AGS Core system and a wide range of command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) systems to interconnect with and provide data to multiple deployed and non-deployed operational users, including reach-back facilities remote from the surveillance area.

The ground segment component will consist of a number of ground/maritime stations in various configurations, such as mobile and transportable, which will provide data-link connectivity, surveillance, data-processing and exploitation capabilities via interfaces (interoperability) with NATO and national C2ISR systems.