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Aerial
Common Sensor - ACS
Aerial Common Sensor Gets Green Light
from Army Leadership
BY Lt. Col.
Carl Ey
WASHINGTON (Army
News Service, March 29, 2007) - The Army's next-generation
airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
platform has a new runway to get off the ground.
"The Army remains committed
to ACS (Aerial Common Sensor) to meet current and
emerging reconnaissance, surveillance and target
acquisition requirements," said Col. John Burke,
deputy director, Army Aviation, Deputy Chief of
Staff for Operations and Plans at the Pentagon.
The ACS is intended to detect
troop movements, intercept enemy communications
and radar transmissions, and communicate with other
aircraft.
After terminating an $879
million contract with Lockheed Martin for the development
of the system in early 2006, the Army is returning
to the drawing board to focus on system requirements.
"The prudent course of
action at this time was to terminate the contract
and bring the various players - industry, the acquisition-
and user-communities, the Navy and Air Force - back
to the drawing board to make sure we all have a
firm understanding of what the requirements are
and the various challenges we need to overcome to
make this program succeed," said Claude M.
Bolton, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition
Logistics and Technology in 2006. "We are not
terminating the program."
Vice Chief of Staff of the
Army Gen. Richard A. Cody approved the development
of an ACS blocked requirements and acquisition strategy
March 16. By blocking the acquisition, the ACS capability
can achieve the full system's performance by taking
advantage of mature payloads early and then integrating
those in development when prudent, he said.
"We didn't want to wait
10 years or more for the 'big bang' of trying to
wait for everything at once," Cody said.
An Armywide team is now assessing
requirements, acquisition and funding, and will
report findings in all areas in a decision briefing
next quarter.
In the next 60 days, the Army
will:
• Refine the specific ACS requirements in
a blocked strategy and develop an acquisition strategy
to meet these requirements against the desired capability
delivery timeline;
• Establish an interoperability plan with the
Navy's similar capability for their maritime applications;
• Develop the Manned-Unmanned Teaming concept
to operations;
• Conduct a Mini-Joint Functional Needs Analysis;
and,
• Use all the expertise in our Intelligence,
Aviation, and Communications domains to bear against
the ACS requirements.
ACS is a responsive worldwide,
self-deployable, airborne Reconnaissance, Surveillance,
Targeting and Acquisition/Intelligence, Surveillance,
Reconnaissance system capable of providing real-time
sensor-to-shooter information.
The ACS initiative will merge
and improve the capabilities of the Army's Guardrail
Common Sensor and Airborne Reconnaissance Low systems
into a single multifunction platform, and eventually
replace those legacy airborne ISR systems.
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