State Partnership Program

Video by Courtesy

NATO Global Hawk Soundbite

Natochannel

June 28, 2016 | 3:47

James E. Edge, NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Management Agency (NAGSMA), General Manager.

00:00:00:00
Global hawk that we are buying is going to be equipped with a very special radar sensor. It will be able to take synthetic aperture radar images which are very high fidelity radar pictures from approximately 60,000 ft in the air, standoff rangers in excess of 100-200 nautical miles. And those images will give us the ability to spotlight items of interest that we see on what we call ‘the ground moving target indicating capability radar’. In other words, we can see vehicles, people, and boats even, moving on the surface of the earth that are items of interest. Then we speculate what those might be with other intelligent sources and then give our commanders and decision-makers good information. So that they can make good decisions.
00:00:49:18
The Global Hawk aircraft is a virtually only high altitude long endurance platform in the world right now.
00:00:58:00
The aircraft has no ability any offensive capability at all and its defensive capabilities are limited to a standoff range and its extreme high altitude.
00:01:09:18
One of the overarching reasons to get NATO AGS and flag it as a NATO asset is that NATO wanted an organic capability which it could task and then take all the data and information coming off of it and disseminate that to all nations in the Alliance without any screening, absolutely unfiltered access to the data.
00:01:34:13
The first home basis is going to be in Sicily, Sigonella Airbase which was chosen primarily to take advantage of the strategic location, and secondly, to take advantage of synergies for logistics and operations and maintenances.
00:02:13:18
Several different skill sets are involved. We’ve got the sensor operators who are talking with the pilots to optimize the viewing angle of the aircraft so that we are looking at precisely where the area of interest is. And that area of interest comes from a set of defence intelligence analysts who say “I need to look at here” or “Yes, that looks like something I need to investigate greater”. So, all these people are sitting looking at different consuls to determine where to put the airplane. A set of mission planers are looking at consuls and flying the airplane on a computer to get the airplane and the sensor where it needs to be.
00:02:49:18
You can imagine a hand full of scenarios from the natural disaster that we suffered. You can go back when the United States had the tsunami for example, that hits Indonesia, that sometimes ago obviously but that type of situation when you need to put an assets that is on rotation for long time because the water is settling, changes are occurring, and you can’t keep a helicopter orbiting for six to eight hours you know, the NATO AGS can stay up for 24 hours at the time and give you real time information of a very broad area
00:03:25:18
Obviously crisis situation where you have what appears to be movements from one country into another country illicitly saying that you know there appears to be military activities here, what do NATO commanders and NATO national leaders need to understand about those movements. The imagery that comes off the NATO AGS is truth data it does not lie.
00:03:49:18
We look to go to what we call the initial operation capability in December 2017 and full operation capability right now is scheduled for 2018. A lot of things have to happen obviously between now and then, getting all the aircrafts there, get the infrastructure built up completely at Sigonella and get SHAPE troops ready to go.