AGS system overviewThis site will provide an overview of the AGS background and the AGS system.
The history of AGS does in some ways date back to the Gulf war in 1990-91. That was the first operation where the US introduced their Joint Stars, a ground surveillance capability similar to the future AGS system. In 1992 the NATO Defence Planning Committee agreed that AGS was a NATO capability shortfall. It was clear that the Alliance's political and military leaders need current and unrestricted information to form a clear and cohesive approach to any NATO involvement in a crisis situation. Such information could be extracted from air activity data provided by the NATO owned Airborne Early Warning Force. NATO did not then and still does not have a similar capability to cover ground activities. Work to exploit this capability began. In 1995, NATO nation ministers endorsed a recommendation to further pursue a minimum essential NATO owned and operated ground surveillance core capability supplemented by interoperable national assets. This AGS Core capability will detect, locate, recognize and track activities on or near the surface, and disseminate related data in a timely manner.
The AGS Core will be a three service system consisting of an airborne and a ground segment. The airborne segment will be made up by aircraft carrying radars that can provide images of the ground (Synthetic Aperture Radar - SAR) as well as data from moving targets on the ground (Moving Target Indicator - MTI). Additionally, the radar detects low and slow flying vehicles and moving objects such as rotating antennas. AGS will be a standoff system, meaning that the airborne radar carrying assets are not penetrating the airspace above the area that is being surveyed. The AGS ground segment will be made up by ground stations and ground installations to receive, exploit and disseminate the data to multiple users simultaenously.
Use links for more in-depth descriptions of NATO's future airborne ground surveillance system.
AGS links
Here are some relevant AGS links for you to explore:
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