NEWS

NATO’s first Alliance Ground Surveillance aircraft to expand intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities has been unveiled in California.

The AGS aircraft is Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk, a wide-area long-endurance unmanned aerial system for use in a variety of ISR missions, including troop support, border security and crisis management.

“This marks a significant step forward in achieving NATO’s goal of acquiring NATO-owned and operated AGS Core Capability,” said Erling Wang, chairman of the NATO AGS Management Organization, or NAGSMO. “What you see here today [Thursday] is the result of one of the commitments made at the 2012 NATO Summit — to bring this advanced and critical persistent ISR capability to the alliance to help ensure we can continue to address the range of challenges our member and other allied nations face.”

The NATO AGS program calls for five air vehicles and fixed, mobile and transportable ground stations. Northrop Grumman’s primary industrial team includes Airbus Defense and Space of Germany, Selex ES of Italy and Norway’s Kongsberg.