Tougher than the AWACS, planning for NATO’s Future

AFSC, Alliance Future Surveillance and Control

https://youtu.be/1NLrjbxdoCI

The Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (AFSC) initiative is about how NATO will continue to effectively monitor the skies over Allied territory when its current fleet of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft reach the end of their service life in 2035. Through this initiative, NATO is fundamentally redefining how it will conduct surveillance, and command and control in the future. In order to take account of future threats and emerging technologies, NATO is working with experts from science, technology, industry and the military fields to encourage innovative solutions. NATO is studying a range of new technologies and different options to replace the AWACS aircraft – NATO’s “eyes in the sky.” These could include different combinations of systems in the air, on land, at sea, in space, and in cyber space. NATO’s AFSC requirements could be met through a combination of national, multinational, and NATO-funded solutions. NATO has agreed high-level requirements to define what is needed from the future systems and to ensure Allied capabilities are able to operate as a fully integrated force. In this way, NATO is helping to inform future decisions by Allies for their long-term planning and acquiring new capabilities. What’s Next? At the end of March 2020, six Allied companies’ consortia1 delivered concept studies, providing initial views on how NATO could meet the AFSC requirements by 2035. NATO is currently assessing these concepts in order to define a more narrow scope for AFSC before the end of 2020. In 2021, NATO will launch a call for a second round of more detailed studies to assess the feasibility of the proposed concepts. Starting in 2023, NATO will analyse the proposed AFSC concept against the Alliance’s inventory of capabilities to help determine where new developments may be needed. AFSC is managed by a project office hosted by the NATO Support and Procurement Agency located in Luxembourg. It currently has a budget of up to EUR 118.2 million under the NATO Security Investment Programme. 1 Airbus Defence and Space; Boeing, with Indra, Inmarsat, Leonardo, and Thales; General Atomics; L3Harris with 3SDL, Deloitte Consulting, Hensoldt Sensors, IBM, Musketeer Solutions, Synergeticon and Videns; Lockheed Martin; MDA Systems, with General Dynamics Mission Systems