First UK Surveillance ASTOR Flies: Will Integrate with NATO's AGS
Major progress was recently achieved with the UK Ministry of Defence's €1.47 billion ($1.82 billion) airborne standoff radar (ASTOR) battlefield surveillance program. In January, the remaining three of the five program aircraft were delivered to UK Raytheon Systems Ltd at Broughton, Wales, for ASTOR conversion.
On April 1, the RAF's No 5 Squadron was re-formed at Waddington air base, as the joint-service ASTOR operating unit. And on May 26 came the initial flight of the first fully-equipped Bombardier Global Express Sentinel R.1, at L-3 Communications Integrated Systems/Raytheon Greenville, Texas, facility.
Apart from five Global Express/Sentinels costing €621.6 million ($762.2 million), the ASTOR system includes six tactical ground stations, each comprising four 6x6 Steyr mobility vehicles, and two operational-level ground stations, housed in air-transportable 20-ft ISO containers, worth €181.5 million ($222.5 million). The program is on time and within budget, the latter including a further €689.7 million ($845.6 million) for ASTOR system development, plus provision of training and support at RAF Waddington, for an overall program total of €1,492.2 million ($1,829.6 million).
Derived from the Lockheed U-2's ASARS-2 radar, Raytheon's ASTOR installation is an advanced 1-D active electronically scanned array (AESA) dual-mode synthetic aperture/moving target indicator (SAR/MTI) unit, housed in a ventral forward-fuselage fairing. The SAR produces near real-time high-resolution day/night and all-weather images of the terrain and stationary targets, while the MTI can track moving ground targets over stand-off distances exceeding 160 nmi, from 45,000 ft altitude or more. Ground station integration is progressing at Broughton, and mobility trials are starting to provide full technical support and crew training, for 2005 initial service. Complete system delivery is due by 2007, when the Sentinels will become operational alongside RAF Boeing E-3D Sentry AEW.1s, three ELINT Nimrod R.1s and five Canberra PR.9s at Waddington.
ASTOR radar imagery can be analyzed in the air, and transmitted via SATCOM and secure datalinks to ground stations. SATCOM antennas are housed in a streamlined blister above the cockpit, which, with the under-fuselage canoe, required adding a bullet-fairing extension to the vertical stabilizer, and two rear-fuselage delta fins, to maintain directional and longitudinal stability. The entire flight envelope in this configuration has now been cleared by Aircraft 9001, the Global Express ASTOR aerodynamic development aircraft.
ASTOR will be interoperable with NATO and allied systems. When required, the air platform may operate independently of ground stations, through datalinks to other land/sea military systems. Following NATO's recent decision to pursue the Transatlantic Industrial Proposed System (TIPS) option for its €3.2 billion ($3.88 billion) core Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) program, via an EADS/Northrop Grumman-led consortium, Defense Procurement Minister Lord Bach said in May that the UK would offer ASTOR as a national contribution to overall AGS capability. The UK participated in the recently completed AGS definition phase, he added, and ASTOR would complement the core AGS system when this entered service. The UK would not be a funding partner in future phases of the NATO program, but it would contribute advice and guidance to ensure that the required interoperability was achieved. Raytheon is in Hall 2, Stand A12a and Chalet B7-12.
