NATO Airborne Early

Warning & Control Force

Overall Classification

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Major General Jörg Lebert

NAEW&C Force Commander

15 May 2019

NAEW&C Platforms in

Security Operations &

Modern Warfare

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Current Capability

• Force Mission

• Evolving Roles and Capability Sustainment

• Current NAEW&CF Roles

Back to the Future

• The Changing Environment

• Meeting the future Battle Management Command and Control Challenge

Final Thoughts

Agenda

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14 E-3As NATO Geilenkirchen

6 E-3Ds RAF Waddington

Mission Statement

Deliver ready, responsive Airborne Early Warning, Battle

Management and Command & Control in support of NAC taskings

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NAEW&C Force Current Mission

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USA 2001-2002

EUROPE HVE Support

2001-ongoing

BALKANS 1992-2004

LIBYA 1992

&

2011

IRAQ 1990-1991

&

2003

ISAF 2011-2014

ASSURANCE

MEASURES Mar 2014 -

ongoing

NAEW&C Force Operations Mission Taskings

TAM-T Mar 2016 -

ongoing

C-ISIL Oct 2016 -

ongoing

NATO AWACS Supporting Alliance Security Objectives Since 1982

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SEA

GUARDIAN 2009-ongoing

1,000th Assurance Measure Crew (2016)

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Expectations

1980’s 1990’s 2000+

Airborne Early Warning

- Air Surveillance

(In support of NATO

Integrated Air Defence)

Tactical Control -

AWACS

- Air Surveillance

- Defensive Counter Air

- Offensive Counter Air

(Allied Force)

Battle Management

Command and Control –

Airborne BMC2

- Air Surveillance

- Defensive Counter Air

- Offensive Counter Air

- Air Mobility C2

- Air Refuelling C2

- Special Operations

- Counter Land

- Maritime Support

- Disaster Relief

Evolving Roles - AEW to ABM

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Evolving Capability Supporting New Domains

In order to enable effective execution of Maritime Support tasks, the E-3 Radar’s

Maritime Surface Surveillance Mode was augmented by the Addition of Automatic

Identification System (AIS)

AIS allows operators to partially identify vessels by accessing the world-wide maritime

database where there is an correlated identity/Track, and to identify tracks of interest

based upon suspicious/absence of an AIS return

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The result enables the E-3 to

both augment the Recognised

Maritime Surface Picture, and to

act as a force multiplier for

Maritime assets

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NAEW&C Force Current Roles & Capabilities

Battle Management Command

and Control – Airborne BMC2

- Air Surveillance

- Defensive Counter Air

- Offensive Counter Air

- Theatre Ballistic Missile

Defence (BMD)

- Air Mobility C2

- Air Refuelling C2

- Special Operations

- Counter Land

- Maritime Support

- Disaster Relief

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Airborne Battlespace Management

- Integrated Air & Missile Defence

- Combat Search and Rescue

- Air-Land Integration

- CAS, Tac Recce, Air Drop

- Dynamic/Time Sensitive Targets

- Maritime Support

- Maritime Surface Surveillance

- Counter-Piracy/Counter-Drugs

- Maritime Counter-Terrorism

- Counter-Smuggling

- Joint Intelligence Surveillance and

Reconnaissance (ISR)

- Air and Maritime Surface Pattern of Life

- Electronic Surveillance/Order of Battle

- ISR Cross-Cue

- (AGS cooperation)

Due to complete by end-2019

Three projects to sustain deployable BMC2 capability:

• Cockpit Modernisation (Glass Cockpit)

• Mode 5 / Enhanced Mode S IFF Interrogator Upgrade

• Enhanced IP Chat

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Evolving Capability Ongoing Enhancements

Strategic Challenges will Continue to Evolve

• NATO needs to evolve with them, as its strategic challenges cannot be

managed through crisis response only

Today’s threats are Multi-dimensional

• Our adversaries are investing in capabilities and competing in ways that are

designed to counter our technical and operational advantages

NATO is responding

• NATO is moving to a more flexible/agile posture

• NATO must continue to adapt to ensure it is able to leverage its technological

and capability advantages by integrating activity and effects across multiple

domains

• This requires both new technologies, new ways of operating, and new

approaches to C2

The Future Environment

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Multi-Domain Operations is the Exploitation of asymmetric advantage across

multiple domains (Air, Land, Sea, Space, Sub-surface, Cyberspace) to achieve

freedom of action required by the mission. (Reilly, J. Air and Space Power Journal, Spring 2016)

Multi-Domain Command and Control (MDC2) is simply the C2 across all

domains that protects, permits and enhances the conduct of operations to

create desired effects at the time, place and method of choosing.

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Multi-Domain Operations

• Situational

Awareness

• Rapid decision-

making

• Ability to direct

forces to achieve

Commander’s intent

• Creating and

exploiting temporary

windows of

advantage

• Building flexible,

resilient formations

in the Joint Force

• Altering force

posture to enhance

deterrence

MDC2. http://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/csaf/letter3/Enhancing_Multi-domain_CommandControl.pdf MDB. http://www.tradoc.army.mil/MultiDomainBattle/docs/MDB_WhitePaper.pdf

The NAEW&CF must adapt to play its part

in delivering effective MDC2

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Sensor/Data

• Long Range Detection

• Mobile Target ID

• IFF/AIS Tracks

• GMTI - SIGINT - IMINT

• PED / Analysis

• Other Nat’l Assets

• Imagery - Video

• Commercial Assets

• CSD

Information Products

• Campaign Analysis

• Patterns, Military Intent

• Emerging threats

• I&W triggers

• Mission reports

• Intel summary reports

• Enables clear msn objectives

• Drives agile, adaptable ops

• Seize opportunities/reduce

vulnerabilities

• Shrinks the Kill Chain

• Accelerates desired end state

• Decision Superiority Is

foundational for success in

future military operations

Data (Sensor Grid)

Individual pieces of raw,

unorganized facts (text,

details, imagery, etc.)

Information

Data that has been analyzed

and structured to make it

useful in a given context

Decision Superiority

(Effects)

Shared awareness of multi-

domain information to enable

timely, actionable decisions

Speed & Accuracy of the process determines Success

Multi-Domain C2 is critical for Decision Superiority & future operational success

Secure, BLOS Comms, DataLink, Networks

Decision Superiority

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Delivering MDC2

- Air Surveillance

- Defensive Counter Air

- Offensive Counter Air

- Maritime Support

- Counter Land

- Special Operations

- Disaster Relief

- Theatre BMD

- Air Mobility

- Joint ISR

Airborne Networking

Tactical Data Links

Secure Communications

Anti-jam Communications

Passive Detection

Mission System

Expanding Mission Sets

Capability Gaps

Requirements Priority List

NAEW Capability Demand

Sustainability

Gap Analysis

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• Enhanced Airborne Networking

• Increases Chat bandwidth – 1000x increase over

current capability

• Enables operators to access additional data and

tools via reachback

• Allows access to Coalition Shared Data servers,

Friendly Force Tracker, Streaming GMTI,

Classified web, & more

• Enhanced Link 16 – capacity, reach (JREAP-C),

security

• Secure, Anti-Jam Radios

• Enable reliable, secure communication with NATO

and partner Forces

• Extend radio frequency coverage to enable the

E-3A fleet to provide support across Air/Land/Sea

Domains

Final Lifetime Extension Program Networking & Comms

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• Improved Passive Detection

• Increased capacity, capability, and speed to enhance our threat ID capability,

and sustain that capability to Out of Service Date (OSD)

Mission System Enhancement

• Full integration of AIS and IP CHAT

• Improved system processing capacity and data handling

• Improved Human Machine Interface (HMI) to mitigate increasing complexity of

battlespace and volume of C2 information

• Integration of new resources such as Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI)

and Coalition Shared Database (CSD) to move towards a true Multi-Domain

BMC2 capability

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Final Lifetime Extension Program Sensors & Mission System

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Final Thoughts

The NATO E-3 Force has evolved from a simple AEW platform through the

traditional AWACS to become an effective provider of Battle Management

Command and Control (BMC2).

The next series of upgrades will consolidate NAEW capability across the Air,

Land, and Maritime Domains, networking with other systems and capabilities

to support multi-domain operations

Multi Domain Command and Control (MDC2)increases the volume of

data/information to process, the demand for enabling network bandwidth,

and the need to assist decision makers

The enablers for MDC2 are platform agnostic:

• Technology – CONOPS – Supporting Structures

• Shift in approach & thinking

The NAEW&C Force will evolve to sustain its role at the heart of Alliance

BMC2; however, what comes next…?

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Questions?

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