NATO AGS Program Moves Forward

Released on Thursday, April 28, 2005

TIPS Industries has received a 23 million Euros contract from NATO to move the Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) program forward. The contract is aimed at addressing issues such as interoperability, NATO airborne early warning, and control harmonization and potential cost saving measures in parallel to the program's upcoming design and development phase.

This award is the next step following TIPS mixed fleet solution selection by NATO to meet the AGS core requirement and the decision of 23 nations to participate the program. TIPS Industries is a consortium comprising EADS (Germany), Galileo Avionica (Italy), General Dynamics Canada (Canada), Indra (Spain), Northrop-Grumman (USA) and Thales (France).

The study funded by this contract will also address integration of Transatlantic Cooperative AGS Radar (TCAR) into aircraft's of AGS mixed fleet. The study will be complete by late 2005 paving the way for the design and development phase which will start soon thereafter. NATO expects to use AGS capability for nation building, homeland security and humanitarian relief.

The aim of AGS is to provide situational awareness through a shared common ground picture that will be available to NATO nations and decision makers. The mixed fleet will comprise both manned and unmanned platforms providing 21st century Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Command and Control (C2) capabilities. TCAR draws on state-of-the-art technologies coming from the USA and Europe.