Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and Space: A Framework to Help Understand the Issues

Abstract

As a smaller Air Force transitions to an Aerospace Force to start the new millennium, space offers a vantage point where no point on Earth is denied to a sensor system. Joint Vision 2010 describes leveraging technological opportunities to achieve information superiority to enable full spectrum dominance. A key component of information superiority is airborne command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) assets. In a time of budget constraints, the Air Force must make some hard decisions regarding tradeoffs between current and future capabilities. This thesis offers a C4ISR framework to help identify categories that may bring to light some of the important issues associated with moving airborne capabilities to space. The framework is used to categorize current and future capabilities of airborne and space assets, and to compare and contrast C4ISR operations in these two environments. The seven categories in the C4ISR framework are: command and control, training, communications, surveillance, electronic intelligence, mission flexibility/versatility, and global presence. By highlighting the complexity of moving AWACS capabilities to space the paper also facilitates a better understanding of the air battle manager and space and missile operations career fields. Although the potential of space-based C4ISR systems is enormous, space-based assets will complement rather than replace air- and surface-based assets to form an integrated system with built-in redundancies. Due to technological and funding issues, not every AWACS capability can be moved to space by the year 2025. In particular, the space community does not currently have an air battle manager core competency nor do they intend to develop this in the future.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA392023

Entities

People

  • Roland Van Deventer

Organizations

  • Air University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Airborne Warning And Control System
  • Aircraft Industry
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Birds
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Control Systems
  • Military Aircraft
  • Military History
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Transport Aircraft
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Warfare
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control
  • Microelectronics
  • Space