At Farnborough, ThalesRaytheon Systems was making a major pitch to British authorities, hoping that the United Kingdom (UK) would join the NATO’s Air Command and Control System (ACCS) programme. The ambitious NATO programme is to have a single system for air operation among its members. Disclosing this to SP’s Aviation, the Vice President, NATO Business Development, ThalesRaytheon Systems, Stephane Lavigne, said that NATO’s ACCS is now delivering a system that networks air command and control systems across 17 locations in NATO Europe using the same system of hardware and software and sharing operational data over a high-speed communications network. The focus is on inter-operability among the NATO countries. The programme is in real time and it involves the full-chain of air command of operation. There is integration at the geographical level and at the operational level.

The highlight of the ACCS programme, he said, is to build a command ‘air picture’ and to detect any missile launch in the region. It is the biggest cloud operation in the world. In the first phase, Germany, Italy, France and Belgium were part of the programme and now 11 additional countries are part of it. These include Turkey, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece.

“The UK is part of the NATO and it is the right time for it to consider joining the ACCS programme,” he said. The project helps in mission planning, tasking and networking. More importantly, it monitors ballistic missile launches and is a coordinated effort for ballistic missile defence. NATO ACCS sets new standards of integration for air operations in Europe, providing a single, integrated approach to planning, tasking, monitoring and mission execution.

In the future, ACCS will integrate missile defence command and control for NATO, interoperability with Air Ground Surveillance (AGS) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and sensor to shooter mission execution.