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This article reports that reconnaissance specialists of Great Britain have admitted that they don't know exactly what's going to happen when the first two airborne stand-off radar or Astor ground-surveillance aircraft are put in the hands of aircrews later this year. There are, of course, the basics, which involve use of various synthetic aperture radar (SAR) modes--including swath, spot and ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and intelligence fusion--to supply intelligence to a combat brigade headquarters about what's moving and emitting on the battlefield around it. The SAR data can be manipulated further to offer change detection, which allows the system to identify what has left or come on to the battlefield, such as mobile air defense or battlefield ballistic missiles. Using GMTI, Astor also can track where those targets of interest go.

The article presents information related to a new network which reduces time for locating high-priority moving objects on the battlefield to seconds. Over the Atlantic Ocean this winter, the U.S. and Great Britain are proving that their command-and-control and intelligence aircraft, by working together, can pinpoint moving targets within seconds, a fraction of the time thought possible until only a few years ago. The targets provided as part of the U.S. Navy's Operation Trident Warrior 2005 exercise included simulated military and terrorist convoys and air defense threats dispersed across the littoral areas of North Carolina. The machine-to-machine links of NCCT and Suter speed the process, and automated decision aids are employed to help analysts learn about a foe, such as how his communications networks are organized, as they monitor and associate a variety of signals.

The article focuses on the development of airborne stand-off radar or Astor for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance use in Great Britain. However, given that the laws of physics apply equally in Great Britain, such non-kinetic effects as intelligence gathering, jamming and production of electronically destructive pulses will be an intrinsic part of the Astor's radar technology, once the proper software and processor modifications are made. The 18-ft. canoe-like fairing beneath Astor's fuselage houses a 14-ft. antenna that could be focused, with the appropriate changes, to concentrate the radar's energy into a single beam. That beam can produce jamming noise, disrupt guidance systems, produce false targets or even damage sensitive electronic components. Because of these capabilities, the radar could be used as a self-defense weapon against air-to-air, surface-to-air or jam-following missiles, or as an offensive capability against enemy aircraft, helicopters or cruise missiles of a size large enough to carry a one-ton warhead, according to some aerospace industry researchers.