08/20/2016: James E. Edge, NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Management Agency (NAGSMA), General Manager talks about the coming of the NATO Global Hawk.
“You can imagine a hand full of scenarios from the natural disaster that we suffered. You can go back when the United States had the tsunami for example, that hits Indonesia, that sometimes ago obviously but that type of situation when you need to put an assets that is on rotation for long time because the water is settling, changes are occurring, and you can’t keep a helicopter orbiting for six to eight hours you know, the NATO AGS can stay up for 24 hours at the time and give you real time information of a very broad area.
Obviously crisis situation where you have what appears to be movements from one country into another country illicitly saying that you know there appears to be military activities here, what do NATO commanders and NATO national leaders need to understand about those movements. The imagery that comes off the NATO AGS is truth data it does not lie.
We look to go to what we call the initial operation capability in December 2017 and full operation capability right now is scheduled for 2018. A lot of things have to happen obviously between now and then, getting all the aircrafts there, get the infrastructure built up completely at Sigonella and get SHAPE troops ready to go.”
Credit: NATO:6/28/16