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Introduction





  1. In the words of military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty”. Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) is a critical component to dispel the ‘fog of war’ – and in times of hybrid warfare, the ‘fog of peace’ as well. Accurate intelligence can provide a decisive advantage. Indeed, Napoleon once said that “war is 90% information”.




  1. Today, NATO’s security environment is characterised by growing uncertainty, instability, and risks. Asymmetric threats combine with conventional challenges posed by potential state adversaries. On NATO’s eastern Flank, a militarily resurgent Russia has illegally and illegitimately annexed Crimea and continues its military aggression in eastern Ukraine. On their southern Flank, Allies face an increasing flow of foreign fighters as well as the terrorist organisation Daesh1 and other radical extremist groups. In this context, advanced airborne ISR systems become ever more crucial to reduce uncertainty and inform political and military decision-makers – both at the strategic level and in concrete military operations.




  1. In 1794, the French army used the hot air balloon L'Entreprenant for observation during the Battle of Fleurus, which marked the first time airborne ISR made a decisive difference to the outcome of a battle. Since, airborne ISR has become an integral part of the armed forces. Over the last 15 years, in particular, airborne ISR has repeatedly proved its worth for NATO, directly supporting its three core tasks: collective defence, crisis management, and cooperative security. Airborne ISR was an integral part of NATO’s past operations in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Today, Allied ISR systems monitor Russian snap exercises near NATO territory, survey the flows of migrants to Europe, and support the fight against terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa.




  1. In early 2016, NATO has taken several decisions that demonstrate the immense utility of ISR:




  • In the Aegean Sea, NATO’s Standing Maritime Group 2 conducts reconnaissance, monitoring and surveillance activities in support of the efforts by Greece, Turkey and Frontex (the European Union’s border agency) to stop illegal trafficking and illegal migration;

  • In response to the ongoing civil war in Syria, NATO has stepped up its ISR activities along the Turkish-Syrian border;

  • Allies participating in the coalition against Daesh with Airborne Early Warning and Control national assets were allowed to task NATO’s fleet of Boeing E-3A Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to fill national requirements.




  1. At the July 2016 NATO Summit in Warsaw, the Heads of State and Government took the latter decision further and agreed in principle to provide “direct NATO AWACS support to increase the coalition's situational awareness”, planned to start in autumn 2016. Allies made it clear, however, that this contribution did not make NATO a member of the coalition. Furthermore, Allies agreed, in principle, “on a possible NATO role in the Central Mediterranean, to complement and/or, upon European Union request, support, as appropriate, the EU's Operation Sophia”. The Operation is the EU’s effort against migrant smugglers and traffickers in the Southern Central Mediterranean. One of the capabilities that NATO could provide, if asked, would be ISR.



  1. Increased intelligence sharing, including as part of Allied ISR, has long been an elusive goal for NATO. Recently, however, the momentum has been shifting. The 2010 Strategic Concept, approved at the Lisbon Summit, called for enhanced intelligence sharing “to better predict when crises might occur, and how they can best be prevented”. To that end, Allies decided to “continue to enhance both the political and the military aspects of NATO’s contribution to deter, defend, disrupt and protect against [the threat of terrorism] including through advanced technologies and greater information and intelligence sharing”. The so-called Lisbon Package called upon Allies to acquire “key enabling capabilities – including information systems for more effective decision‑making and command and control, and improved arrangements for sharing intelligence”. The momentum continued at the 2012 Chicago Summit where NATO launched the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JISR) initiative to better synchronise and integrate NATO ISR. At the 2014 Wales Summit, the Defence Planning Package reconfirmed ISR as one of NATO’s top priorities. NATO’s Allied Ground Surveillance (AGS) system, with the Global Hawk unmanned aerial system at its core, is on track to be available to NATO in 2017. Furthermore, as a result of from the 2016 Warsaw Summit, the Alliance has begun the process of defining options for a follow-on capability for NATO’s AWACS when the last plane will be grounded in 20392. At the Summit, Allies also agreed that they “will further improve our strategic anticipation by enhancing our situational awareness, particularly in the east and south and in the North Atlantic”. They argued that the “ability to understand, track and, ultimately, anticipate, the actions of potential adversaries through Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and comprehensive intelligence arrangements is increasingly important”.




  1. The report has been prepared to inform the parliamentary debate on airborne ISR within the Alliance. It builds upon previous work on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and next‑generation aircraft within the Science and Technology Committee (STC) of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA). The report was first discussed at the STC meeting at the NATO PA Spring Session in Tirana, held on Sunday 29 May 2016. Since then, it has been updated, revised, and expanded for discussion and adoption at the STC meeting at the NATO PA Annual Session in Istanbul on Sunday 20 November 2016. Valuable insights for this report were gained from a roundtable at the US National Defense University in Washington DC in April 2016, hosted by the Center for Technology and National Security Policy. Committee members heard from and discussed with Lieutenant General John N.T. Shanahan, Director of Defense Intelligence (Warfighter Support) in the Office of the US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, as well as representatives from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Silent Falcon UAS Technologies, and Textron AirLand. The report examines the following topics:




  • the role of airborne ISR, including in recent operations and the current and future strategic environment;

  • major airborne ISR efforts in Allied states;

  • NATO ISR adaptation; and

  • trends in airborne ISR.


  1. NATO Airborne ISR: Lessons and Adaptation





  1. At the most fundamental level, the goal of ISR is to collect data and information and transform it into intelligence that informs military or political decision-making. While surveillance is the persistent monitoring of a target, for example NATO airspace, reconnaissance is a more targeted activity in order to answer particular questions, such as tracking down a vessel of interest in the Mediterranean Sea. Data can come from any source in any of the military domains (air, cyber, land, sea, and space), for example from human intelligence, airborne systems, or satellites systems. As such, airborne ISR is only one element of the total ISR network. Gathered information must be processed to produce intelligence, which can then be disseminated and utilised to make informed decisions, prevent surprises, command and protect military forces, and engage the enemy.




  1. As opposed to satellites, airborne ISR platforms can flexibly and rapidly move to where they are needed. Compared to ground-based intelligence, they provide a bird’s eye perspective. Therefore, airborne ISR can provide real-time intelligence for tactical needs, but can also produce strategic intelligence for situational awareness. Airborne ISR is thus not just an enabling capability, but a core element of politico‑military decision-making. However, airborne ISR’s major limiting factor is predominantly a lack of suitably trained manpower related to aircraft operations, maintenance, and capacities for intelligence analysis.



  1. Lessons learned: NATO Airborne ISR in the Recent Past





  1. Despite the widespread use of airborne ISR throughout the 20th century, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 marked a turning point for modern ISR: the rise of asymmetric non-state adversaries and rapid technological developments in unmanned capabilities has made airborne ISR a prominent feature of recent military activities, not least in support of tactical operations.




  1. Airborne ISR in support of ongoing missions on the ground came into its own in the non‑NATO coalition efforts in Iraq. The strategy of providing actionable intelligence directly to small units was made possible because of the surge in airborne ISR assets with full-motion video equipment. Endowed with timely and accurate information, commanders in the field had the ability to strike with surprise and move troops at the right time to the right place. Hence, on the tactical side, individual units benefited from intelligence specific to their current mission. Such highly decentralised control of operational ISR gives commanders a great tactical advantage through flexibility and speed. Integrated and often forward deployed capabilities for analysis and dissemination allowed analysts to confer with and help commanders decide whether to conduct a raid, call in an airstrike, send another collection asset, or continue to observe. Indeed, enhancing ISR to ground commanders was often more important than simply adding air support. On the strategic level, military decision-makers were also provided with an unprecedented level of situational awareness for successful planning and conducting counter-insurgency operations. The characteristically fluid nature of counter-insurgency operations made apparent that no universal approach to ISR management exists. Instead, ISR must remain dynamic as requirements emerge unexpectedly and evolve continually.




  1. Arguably, airborne ISR was and remains even more important in the larger, less developed, and mountainous Afghanistan than in Iraq. In Afghanistan, airborne ISR provided the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with intelligence to protect soldiers and convoys and presented a first line of defence against Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). By creating a safer environment for troops to operate in, airborne ISR also facilitated ISAF’s engagement with the Afghan population, an integral part of the counter-insurgency strategy. However, the major success within this context came when airborne ISR assets were ‘massed and layered’ on prioritised targets, thus creating an ‘unblinking eye’ for the commander. In other words, multiple airborne ISR platforms with multiple sensors conduct surveillance and reconnaissance support to the same mission. However, to achieve this effect requires rigorous prioritisation of targets. Thinly spreading airborne ISR assets to support multiple commanders might seem the most efficient use of these platforms, but time and again it has proved not to be the most effective use. Meanwhile, in addition to their ISR role, armed UAVs, operated by trained pilots, regularly engage in strikes against insurgents and their infrastructure. Operations in Afghanistan showed the importance of tightly integrating airborne ISR into the planning and execution of operations and made clear that often the biggest challenge lies not in eliminating targets, but in finding and pinpointing them. Indeed, the level of training required to successfully conduct this sort of ‘find’ mission should not be underestimated.




  1. Both manned and unmanned airborne ISR platforms supported the 2011 air operations to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in Libya. NATO’s AWACS aircraft contributed ISR capabilities with their advanced sensors, and performed the crucial function of commanding and controlling all Alliance air assets. Tactically, UAVs were particularly useful for operations over densely populated urban areas because they were able to fly lower and offer a more precise picture of the situation on the ground than manned aircraft. Strategically, the vastness of Libya demonstrated the need for long-endurance ISR assets to enhance situational awareness.




  1. Despite these significant contributions, the employment of airborne ISR in the Libyan operation revealed numerous deficiencies. ISR platforms with full-motion video capability were not available for the first five days of the operation. As a result, pilots struggled to distinguish the rebels from the forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi and to identify rapidly moving targets, which are much harder to strike than fixed targets such as weapons storages. Especially after the pro-Gaddafi forces abandoned their conventional posts, differentiating between the different military factions proved nearly impossible without persistent ISR assets that could identify patterns of movements. The lack of ISR capabilities also inhibited accurate battle damage assessment and led to strikes on targets that had already been eliminated. The uncertainty about availability of assets and their late arrival in the theatre stopped the planners use of aircraft efficiently. Moreover, the limited availability of sufficient infrastructure for processing, exploitation, and dissemination underscored the importance of secure, integrated communication across the forces connected to an integrated network to process and analyse intelligence. Finally, as many as 80% of ISR missions over Libya were covered by the United States, with France and the United Kingdom providing most of the rest. However, it should be noted that airborne ISR is not just full-motion video. The true benefits of airborne ISR are reaped when imagery is fused with signals intelligence and radar intelligence. However, this was also a challenge during the Libya operation.





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