The Air Force is massively speeding up a new networked surveillance system intended to collect, organize and disseminate pressing attack information in extremely high-risk environments including enemy stealth fighters, advanced air defenses and armed drones.
The Air Force is massively speeding up a new networked surveillance system intended to collect, organize and disseminate pressing attack information in extremely high-risk environments including enemy stealth fighters, advanced air defenses and armed drones.
The new aerial surveillance system -- or spy network -- is called Advanced Battle Management and Surveillance (ABMS), an emerging technical system designed to succeed the existing Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS)
“We do not want to recap JSTARS but create that same capability that protects soldiers and marines on the move. We want to replicate the technology, yet make it survivable,” William Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, told an audience recently at an Air Force Association Symposium.
The plan is to engineer a series of interconnected surveillance nodes, to possibly include drones, aircraft, satellites and other assets to detect enemy ground movements, provide targeting intelligence to nearby aircraft and help pinpoint fast-emerging new war information. The technology plan was first released in the Air Force 2019 budget.
This next-generation airborne surveillance and command and control technology is intended to successfully synchronize air, ground, drone and satellite assets onto a single seamless network, service officials said.
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