A Northrop Grumman Block 30 Global Hawk unmanned aerial system was evaluated in NATO’s recent 10-day Unified Vision 2014 trial of the alliance’s joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance portfolio.
U.S. European Command flew the Global Hawk over three days from Orland Main Air Station in Norway alongside trials for satellites, naval vessels, ground sensors and other ISR technologies from 18 member countries, Northrop said Tuesday.
“This exercise demonstrated the powerful role unmanned systems can play in helping NATO conduct its future ISR operations,” said Jim Edge, general manager of the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Management Agency.
That Global Hawk is part of the fleet stationed at Sigonella Air Base in Italy, the main operating base for the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance system that Northrop is supporting as a prime contractor.
NATO AGS is intended to enable interoperability between the ISR systems of the U.S., Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Northrop said the system uses Europe-sourced ground components and supports NATO’s JISRÂ efforts by combining intelligence data from different systems.