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missionized aircraft from more exploitation systems. While the breakthroughs from the commercial
than 10 original equipment man- sensors and monitoring equipment sector.
ufacturers, consisting of over 125 will be indigenous, the aircraft will
aircraft types with more than 15,000 be a commercial or executive jet Luxembourg’s early contribution
deliveries. The company has more acquired from abroad, an official at of EUR 16.5 million has laid the
than 50 multi-mission business jet the Ministry of Defence informed. groundwork for this transformative
aircraft on contract or delivered. “We expect that the three ISTAR initiative and will allow partici-
Customers include coast guards aircraft systems will be delivered pating countries to contribute to
and militaries across the U.S., U.K., within 60 months or five years after Aquila through their own assets,
Australia, as well as European and signing of contract,” the official data and/or funds. The 19 partic-
Asian partner nations, a company added. ipating NATO Allies are: Belgium,
official informed. Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, France,
Role of Space in ISTAR Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy,
INDIA and ISTAR Space-based assets, such as satel- Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
The Indian Air Force (IAF) is also lites, play a critical role in providing Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain,
actively pursuing the acquisition intelligence, surveillance and recon- Sweden, Türkiye, the United
of ISTAR as part of its modernisa- naissance capabilities to militaries. Kingdom and the United States.
tion plans. Early this year, the IAF
issued a Request for Information According to a NATO memo, at According to NATO, the APSS
(RFI) for three ISTAR systems the defence ministers’ meeting in initiative – which focuses on
along with associated ground February 2023, a group of NATO assets looking down at Earth – will
segment. The ISTAR systems will Allies together with former invitees complement the Strategic Space
comprise aircraft, onboard pay- Finland and Sweden (now NATO Situational Awareness System
loads, and the associated ground member countries) announced (3SAS), which focuses on assets
segment. The jet aircraft will have their intent to launch the Alliance looking up at space and is cur-
a minimum ceiling of 40,000 feet Persistent Surveillance from Space rently being developed at NATO
and a minimum endurance of eight (APSS) initiative. APSS plans to Headquarters. The 3SAS capabil-
hours. deliver increased ISR capabilities ity will allow the Alliance to better
using data from a large-scale, understand the space environment
virtual constellation of national and and space events, and their effects
The range of multimode synthetic commercial surveillance satellites, across all operational domains.
aperture radar to be 200 kilome- called “Aquila”. This new mech- The 3SAS system is also sup-
tres or more with ground-moving anism will provide the Alliance ported by EUR 6.7 million funding
target indicator, with a range of with faster and better intelligence, from Luxembourg. The project will
minimum 150 kilometres. The integrate even more space-based support NATO’s Space Centre,
ground segment will have two fixed data into NATO’s intelligence eco- which was established in Ramstein,
and four transportable ground system and leverage technological Germany in 2020..

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