Design and Development
ASTOR has its roots in the British Army's Corps Airborne Stand-Off Radar (CASTOR) programme which in 1984 modified a BN-2T Islander (G-DLRA/ZG989) with a large nose radome for battlefield surveillance. Gulf War 1 confirmed the requirement for such an aircraft, but the end of the Cold War made funding difficult. The production contract was signed in December 1999 with a projected in-service date of 2005.
The first flight of the modified prototype was in August 2001, which validated the modifications required for the ASTOR system. The first production Sentinel R1 made its 4.4 hour maiden flight on 26 May 2004. The aircraft entered operational service with V (Army Co-operation) Squadron of the Royal Air Force based at RAF Waddington and flew its first operational sortie in Afghanistan in February 2009.
The Sentinel R1 is a modified Bombardier Global Express powered by two Rolls-Royce Deutschland BR710 turbofan engines, as used in the Nimrod MRA4. The programme involved five aircraft and eight mobile ground stations (six on wheeled all terrain vehicles and two in air transportable containers), and a training facility at RAF Waddington. The programme cost £850m, as budgeted. The support contract is for 3200 flying hours per year.
The Sentinel cockpit has a centrally housed, pull-down screen capable of displaying a moving map, Link 16 datalink information and defensive aids subsystem (DASS) data. The DASS comprises a towed radar decoy, missile approach warning system and chaff and flare dispensers and can be operated in automatic, semi-automatic or manual mode.
The aircraft normally operates at over 40,000 feet (12,000 m) to ensure a high resolution view of a large battlefield area. It is crewed by a pilot, a co-pilot, an Airborne Mission Commander (AMC) and two image analysts. Mission endurance is approximately nine hours. While the image analysts can analyse the images on board the aircraft it is expected that, unlike the JSTARS, the actual battle management will occur on the ground.
The main radar is a Raytheon Systems dual-mode Synthetic Aperture / Moving Target Indication (SAR/MTI) radar known as Sentinel Dual Mode Radar Sensor (DMRS). Raytheon claim it could be modified to match the maritime surveillance capability of the cancelled Nimrod MRA4, and the ground stations could be adapted to receive data from Watchkeeper, MQ-9 Reaper and the future Scavenger programme.
Read more about this topic: Raytheon Sentinel
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