Air Force Builds New Deep Strike "Spy Network" for Air Attack

Kris Osborn

U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. John Lasky

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By Kris Osborn - Warrior Maven

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.

“Through networking, we want this to work as one system,” Roper added.

ABMS had been slated to reach full maturity in the 2040s; now, progress with software, technical advances and early prototyping is massively moving up the timeframe for this, Roper said.

The emerging plan represents the manifestation of lengthy Air Force considerations about whether the large and “not-so-stealthy” manned JSTARS platform would remain functionally useful in a high-threat, high-tech modern threat environment.

ABMS seeks to harvest the latest ISR-oriented technologies from current and emerging systems as a way to take a very large step forward – and connect satellites, drones, ground sensors and manned surveillance aircraft seamlessly in real time across a fast-changing, dispersed combat area of operations. ABMS is described by Air Force officials as more of a “system” than platform-specific application. This technical approach is of great significance amid anticipated future threat scenarios wherein electronic attacks, cyber intrusions and GPS "jamming" weapons are both emerging and proliferating. A collection of interconnected nodes enables surveillance to continue in the event that one is destroyed or rendered inoperable in war.

Over the longer term, the advanced ABMS suite of sensors and ISR technologies could integrate onto a number of current and future air platforms, Air Force officials told Warrior Maven.

Alongside this longer term ABMS effort, the service is also identifying a near-term “bridge” or “interim” solution to meet combat commands while ABMS develops.

Air Force Plan Adjusts to Advanced Threats

While JSTARS functions with great effect in lower threat combat circumstances, such as Afghanistan, where the US maintains air supremacy, its size, configuration and radar signature are such that it could potentially be more vulnerable to advanced enemy air defenses. Clearly, the aircraft is not intended to fly at the edge of combat, unprotected, against enemy fighter jets and air defenses - the question is what kinds of assets, emerging systems or supplemental technologies might be leveraged to expand its mission functionality in more contested areas?

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Bailee A. Darbasie

An ability to address a high-threat electromagnetic warfare environment, by any estimation, is a likely focal point regarding how best to equip large sensor platforms - - for future combat environments. Aircraft with EW countermeasures or systems designed to minimize an electronic "signature" is likely figuring prominently when it comes operating in high-threat warfare scenarios.

There may be emerging assets able to perform these missions more effectively against extremely advanced enemies; newer EW and sensor technology, for instance, are rapidly evolving such that smaller, better protected platforms might have occasion to track wider areas at increasingly longer ranges - all while maintaining a lower radar signature. Faster computer processing speeds, enabling a smaller hardware footprint - coupled with more "hardened" networks and data links - might enable smaller, new platforms to gather, organize, analyze and disseminate crucial, combat-relevant information in near real-time.




The JSTARS Mission


Although initially constructed as a Cold War technology to monitor Soviet Union tank movements in Eastern Europe, the JSTARS has proven very helpful in key areas such as near North Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. The platform has also succeeded in performing maritime missions in the pacific theater, Southcom (U.S. Southern Command) and Central Command areas of responsibility.









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