GlobalEye – Designed for relevance
One major challenge of crises and conflicts is the ability to create credible awareness, especially as today’s operations are often multi-domain. This places extremely high demands on the systems used for providing an overall situational picture and adequate decision support. One solution that has what it takes is Saab’s Airborne Early Warning & Control solution, GlobalEye. Here you can read more about the advantages it brings to your forces – today and in the future.
Threats constantly evolve, adapt, become smarter and ever more difficult to detect. And they can appear from anywhere – be it in the air, sea or ground and often simultaneously. In a combat situation, for example, while land forces are exposed to missile or artillery strikes, they are also vulnerable to attacks from enemy aircraft and naval units. To protect yourself and stay ahead in such an environment, you need the ability to detect, identify and track a wider variety of objects over an extended range. And in real-time you need to really understand what is going on and make the right decisions on how to act.
“Creating and providing such a reliable real-time situational picture requires the ability to exchange large amounts of cross-domain information exchange and connectivity across multi-domains. With GlobalEye, that's exactly what you get”, says Tomas Lundin, Head of Marketing & Sales, Airborne Early Warning & Control Systems.
What then is GlobalEye?
The short answer is that it is an airborne multi-domain solution with long-range detection capabilities. Operating at over 35,000 feet, it can detect, identify, and track countless different objects and signals in the air, at sea and on the ground at more than 300 nautical miles away (550 km). GlobalEye is the most modern and advanced airborne early warning and control solution available today. It ensures that a nation’s air, maritime and ground forces, individually or in joint operations, can benefit from having an accurate and joint picture, allowing them to sustain operations and optimize operational effects.
The core of GlobalEye and the basis of its ability to provide cross-domain exchange and connectivity, is founded primarily on two things. The first is a powerful command and control system for multi-domain surveillance and real-time information. The second is a range of both active and passive sensors capable of handling all threats, in every domain – anything from electronic warfare threats to hypersonic missiles, stealth fighters and small, slow and low flying objects.
“GlobalEye’s combination of multiple sensors and sophisticated data fusion, in an intuitive mission system that can process vast amounts of data and analyse and disseminate it in an automated and efficient way, provide the tools you need to shorten the time from detection to action”, says Tomas Lundin.
GlobalEye also provides a range of communication systems that fully connects it to other platforms and command centres involved. In short, all the capabilities required for making GlobalEye relevant in present as well as future conflict scenarios.
The importance of cross-domain exchange and connectivity
Why is information exchange and connectivity so important? The answer is simple. It is because today's crises and conflicts often unfold as multi-domain events. Threats have also become faster, better coordinated, and more difficult to detect. It is in this context the strength of a sensor solution such as GlobalEye becomes apparent.
“In part, through its ability to simultaneously keep track of everything that goes on within the targeted air, sea and land domains. But also, for its ability to combine and fuse large amounts of multi-domain produced information into a credible common overall picture and reliable decision support”, says Tomas Lundin.
Capabilities that, to the highest degree, meet the needs of today's increasingly complex and demanding conflict scenarios and arm you with unparalleled and uncompromised tactical, operational and strategic benefits.
The benefits of a unified solution
What then is the big difference between creating a unified, comprehensive situational picture based on a solution like GlobalEye compared to doing it with traditional domain-specific sensor and surveillance systems? It is mainly about the fact that GlobalEye is designed from the ground up to provide a state-of-the-art multi-domain surveillance capability in a single solution with the ability to manage cross-domain information exchange and connectivity amongst all units involved in an operation. Which means it will get the job done and provide the right information, to the right place, at the right time.
Deliver on the optimum mission effect
Having a long-range airborne surveillance solution like GlobalEye in a System-of-Systems network, supporting decision makers with trusted, persistent real-time information in three domains, will significantly enhance joint forces’ operational performance. The ability to share trusted and persistent real-time information will not only enhance awareness and allow for on-board operators to take conscious decisions with very high speed. It will also enable allied forces in the air, at sea and on land to be part of every step of the mission loop, accessing a higher level of awareness and prerequisites for best mission effect possible.
“The unique sensor suite gives GlobalEye an unparalleled flexibility. While superbly equipped for wartime missions, GlobalEye’s inherent flexibility can also maximize the value of regular peacetime operations, enabling the platform to watch coastal and land borders while at the same time maintaining the recognized air picture in its role as an airborne early warning and control asset”, says Tomas Lundin.
The value of a common operational picture and the ability to empower a nation’s armed forces with joint use of ISR/intelligence can never be underestimated. It is a huge advantage for a nation to solve common needs from one and the same platform and share the same situational awareness picture and knowledge in real-time. The data quality from GlobalEye’s sensors, the mission system and on-board operators, and the effects of the Link and SATCOM systems will – if used to their full potential – be a decisive game-changer for any defence force.
In today’s increasingly complex, fast-changing, and technologically advanced conflict, scenario information and the ability to manage and utilize this data, is one of the major keys to success. With simultaneous air, maritime and ground surveillance and the ability to exchange information and create connectivity, GlobalEye makes information a powerful and vital tactical, operational and strategic asset.
GlobalEye is designed for continuous upgrades of software and hardware to meet new and evolving threats during its lifetime.
“This means that GlobalEye is already today equipped with a suite of capabilities that will ensure it stays above the threats curve and relevant for decades to come, providing readiness, be it in peacetime, grey-zone, crisis or conflict”, Tomas Lundin concludes.