Intelligence and Situational Awareness

In crisis situations and conflicts, high quality and current (or 'real-time') information is required to support effective decision-making at every level, in both the political and military arenas. Air and space surveillance can be used to develop an understanding of events without necessarily risking a presence on the ground, providing situational awareness in countless ways, from satellite pictures of suspected nuclear facilities or the mapping of poppy fields, down to the high-resolution video provided by weapon-aiming sensors on RAF combat air aircraft such as Typhoon and Tornado. These are data-linked through lap-top terminals directly to soldiers on the ground, providing commanders with access to an increasingly valued bird's-eye view of the action as it unfolds. Communication signals from mobile phones and radios may be tracked by specialist signals intelligence aircraft such as the RAF Nimrod R1, and suspicious activity monitored in the same sort of way - and with the same sort of picture quality - as the cameras used by police helicopters to produce the type of imagery familiar on news reports.

In irregular warfare, insurgents will seek to merge with and fight amongst the civilian population, so understanding the situation on the ground, and confirming the legitimacy of potential targets, is arguably even more important than in conventional 'force-on-force' wars, where armies fight other armies that are relatively easy to find and identify. Consequently, demand for enhanced situational awareness has continued to increase through the recent campaign in Iraq and into current operations in Afghanistan, and the thirst for the quality of information that can only be provided by air and space assets is unlikely to diminish in the future. The RAF has responded quickly by adapting and balancing its force structure in favour of surveillance capabilities; these now include the Reaper remotely piloted air systems, which can loiter for up to twelve hours over areas of interest to provide persistent, high-quality imagery and armed overwatch, and Sentinel, an Airborne Stand Off Radar (ASTOR) system mounted in a business jet that provides a wide-area search capability over tens of thousands of square kilometres to cue other assets, with narrower field-of-view sensors, on to points of interest for tactical exploitation: the analogy is searchlight to flashlight to spotlight.

The reach and broad coverage provided by equipment such as ASTOR is particularly useful in permitting air power to dominate the 'ungoverned spaces' that would otherwise provide a safe haven for insurgents without a massive uplift in land forces and the attendant financial and human cost that this entails. This is just one of the benefits that prompted the Commander of Combined Forces Afghanistan to state in 2008:

Without air and space power, 500 to 600,000 troops would be needed in Afghanistan to achieve the same effects as the 40,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen we have there today. Air and space power provides the asymmetric advantage over the Taliban such that no matter where they choose to fight, coalition forces can bring to bear overwhelming firepower in a matter of minutes. Moreover; putting 500 to 600,000 troops into the country may achieve the same military effect, but it could have a negative impact on the population; such numbers could appear as an occupying force, rather than a security assistance force. In short, there is no substitute for effective air and space power.

Photography: RAF/MOD Crown Copyright 2010.