NACMA, NATO's air command and control system (ACCS) management agency, is exploring potential changes to its prime contract with ThalesRaytheonSystems to incorporate new time-sensitive targeting capabilities and provide a basic level of theatre ballistic missile defence (TBMD) co-ordination.
NACMA has begun rolling out the ACCS software and hardware system test and validation facility, with this expected to be available within six months for the start of initial architecture trials.
According to Dr Gene Katkus, NACMA senior systems engineer, several engineering changes are being considered for the project to reflect shifts in NATO requirements since the original contract was signed in 1999.
"We are planning to do some shared airborne early-warning and time-sensitive targeting," he said during IQPC's Tactical Data Link conference in Brussels on 25 April. The effort will seek to increase the number of messages relayed to fighters for air-to-ground missions, he said. Katkus said ACCS could offer a basic level of TBMD capability by sharing airborne early warning data collected across the entire network. "These are things we could do fairly quickly, looking at the system and getting tactical datalinks in place."
Katkus said the change proposals are expected to be "fairly low cost", but that implementation remains dependent on ongoing reviews of the ACCS programme. Other potential changes include updating the contract deliverables to take into account more recent versions of NATO standards relating to tactical datalinks and alliance interoperability objectives. Consideration is also being given to changes to support integration of the Alliance Ground Surveillance system to be developed by the Transatlantic Industrial Proposed Solution consortium (Flight International, 26 April–2 May).
PETER LA FRANCHI/BRUSSELS
Source: Flight International
