Integrated NATO Air Defense System

NATO Integrated Air Defense System (short: NATINADS) is according to the German army regulation German: Heeresdienstvorschrift (HDv) 100/900 defined as – «A command and control compound (structure or system) of the alliance´s air defence forces, subordinated to the NATO command authorities, already in peace time as well as in crisis and war».

Development was approved by the NATO Military Committee in December 1955. The system was to be based on four air defense regions (ADRs) coordinated by SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe). Starting from 1956 early warning coverage was extended across Western Europe using 18 radar stations. This part of the system was completed by 1962. Linked to existing national radar sites the coordinated system was called the NATO Air Defence Ground Environment (NADGE).

From 1960 NATO countries agreed to place all their air defence forces under the command of SACEUR in the event of war. These forces included command & control (C2) systems, radar installations, and Surface-to-Air (SAM) missile units as well as interceptor aircraft.

By 1972 NADGE was converted into NATINADS consisting of 84 radar sites and associated Control Reporting Centers (CRC) and in the 1980s the Airborne Early Warning / Ground Environment Integration Segment (AEGIS) upgraded the NATINADS with the possibility to integrate the AWACS radar picture and all of its information into its visual displays. (NOTE: This AEGIS is not to be confused with the U.S.Navy AEGIS, a shipboard fire control radar and weapons system.) AEGIS processed the information through Hughes H5118ME computers, which replaced the H3118M computers installed at NADGE sites in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

NATINADS ability to handle data increased with faster clock rates. The H5118M computer had a staggering 1 megabyte of memory and could handle 1.2 million instructions per second while the former model had a memory of only 256 kilobytes and a clock speed of 150000 instructions per seconds.

NATINADS/AEGIS were complemented, in W-Germany by the German Air Defence Ground Environment (GEADGE), an updated radar network adding the southern part of W-Germany to the European system and Coastal Radar Integration System (CRIS), adding data links from Danish coastal radars.

In order to counter the hardware obsolescence, during the mid-90's NATO started the AEGIS Site Emulator (ASE) program allowing the NATINADS/AEGIS sites to replace the proprietary hardware (the 5118ME computer and the various operator consoles IDM-2, HMD-22, IDM-80) with Commercial-Off-the-Shelf servers and workstations.

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