ASPAARO: Airbus and Northrop Grumman team up to outline future NATO AWACS replacement

Northrop Grumman and Airbus Defence and Space, together with seven industrial players, have formed ASPAARO,  the Atlantic Strategic Partnership for Advanced All-domain Resilient Operations. ASPAARO will bid to undertake the Risk Reduction and Feasibility Studies (RRFS) for the NATO Support and Procurement Agency as part of the Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (AFSC) programme.

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In addition to Airbus and Northrop Grumman, the team comprises Lockheed Martin (USA), BAE Systems (UK), KONGSBERG (Norway), MDA (Canada), GMV (Spain), Exence (Poland) and IBM (USA). ASPAARO seeks to offer multi-domain technology solutions with interoperable architecture among NATO member nations.

«State-of-the-art surveillance and control systems are the foundation for ensuring NATO’s continued operational success, to which we are fully committed. We feel privileged to support this strategic program for NATO by leveraging our expertise and capabilities in multi-domain operations, surveillance and intelligence. With this transatlantic partnership, we offer our commitment to provide the Atlantic Alliance with the most powerful technology solutions to ensure it remains at the forefront in the multi-domain theaters of operations of the future,» said Michael Schoellhorn, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space.

Northrop Grumman Aeronautical Systems President Tom Jones emphasized that ASPAARO is focused on the mission requirements of NATO customers. «ASPAARO brings together the best industrial capabilities from across the NATO community to address increasingly vital surveillance and command and control needs. In a rapidly evolving threat environment, NATO needs the strategic advantage provided by advanced surveillance and control; ASPAARO is committed to providing those unmatched capabilities to NATO’s AFSC program.»

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AFSC, the replacement for NATO’s AWACS

AFSC is the name of the program NATO is pursuing to find a replacement for its fleet of E-3 AWACAS airborne warning and command aircraft (recently modernized), which they will begin decommissioning from 2035.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the USAF is also beginning the process of replacing its E-3 Sentry, and the almost «natural» candidate is the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, whose main sensor system, the Multi-role Electronically Scanned Surveillance Radar (MESA) is produced by Northrop Grumman.

The association of these players in the ASPAARO group suggests that the MESA radar and the other main electronic systems that the future USAF E-7s will have will be the same as those operated by the European aircraft, except that they will be mounted on a platform provided by Airbus.