surveillance

The best images we’ve seen so far of the German Luftwaffe’s PEGASUS signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft reveal key details of the unique airframe adaptations made to the Bombardier Global 6000 bizjet platform it’s based on. The photos were shared with TWZ by @CorreaPhtgphy, who captured them earlier this year, in Abilene, Texas.

The aircraft, the first of three for the Luftwaffe, made its first flight from Bombardier’s facility in Wichita, Kansas, on October 23, 2024. Initial flight testing is underway in Wichita, with the work being conducted by pilots from the Bombardier Flight Test Center (BFTC).

The centerpiece of the PEGASUS (which stands for Persistent German Airborne Surveillance System) is the Kalætron Integral SIGINT suite from the Hensoldt company. The first PEGASUS initially took to the air without this mission suite, integration of which is being led by Lufthansa Technik Defense, together with Hensoldt and Bombardier Defense.

However, the aircraft already has the various green-colored fairings associated with the PEGASUS sensors. On each side of the fuselage is an oval-shaped fairing, while below the fuselage is a larger fairing with two distinct bulges, fore and aft. Additionally, smaller green areas atop the tailfin and below the wings suggest further antennas may be located here, too.

According to Hensoldt, Kalætron Integral will be a “comprehensive strategic asset for wide-area reconnaissance, mastering the challenges posed by today’s electromagnetic spectrum.” It will be able to hoover up electromagnetic intelligence from hostile radar emitters (ELINT) as well as enemy communications (COMINT). Electromagnetic emissions will be collected with “exceptional accuracy [and] high sensitivity” over frequencies ranging from below 30 MHz to 40 GHz.

Aided by the Global 6000’s relatively high-altitude flight profile, the Kalætron Integral sensors will be able to detect emissions at ranges up to 250 miles, the manufacturer says. This provides the aircraft with a significant standoff capability, helping keep the jet and its onboard operators further away from enemy air defense systems. Still, line-of-sight restricts even the best sensors and enemy air defenses are only going to have longer and longer reach as time goes on.

On the jet, the operators’ job is intended to be made easier through the use of machine learning and AI algorithms. These should help filter through intercepted emissions, prioritizing them, and speeding up the decision-making process. The end result will bring together intelligence gathered from a variety of different platforms in a rapidly updated electromagnetic order of battle.

The origins of the PEGASUS program lie in plans to supersede the German Navy’s former Breguet Atlantic SIGINT aircraft with a more modern platform. The last SIGINT-configured Atlantic, an aircraft type that was mainly used to roam around the Baltic Sea, was retired in 2010.

The original plan was to replace the Atlantic SIGINT with an adaptation of the Global Hawk drone, the RQ-4E Euro Hawk. Five of these drones were planned to be fielded, each equipped with an Airbus-developed SIGINT system known as ISIS.

European aviation authorities repeatedly refused to certify the RQ-4E to fly over the continent. This, combined with major cost overruns and long delays, saw the program abandoned in 2013, after one of the drones had been flown. Plans to sell the one-off aircraft to Canada collapsed, and the RQ-4E is now set to become a very costly museum exhibit.

For a brief time, the German Ministry of Defense looked at buying another Global Hawk derivative, the U.S. Navy’s MQ-4C Triton, which was developed from the outset for civil certification.

That plan was also abandoned, and the German Armed Forces now pin their hopes on the PEGASUS, an all-new crewed SIGINT platform.

At one point, the Luftwaffe had expected to get its hands on its first RQ-4E under the Euro Hawk program in 2012.

Finally, in 2021, Hensoldt was awarded the contract to supply its Kalætron Integral system for three PEGASUS jets, with the first of these aircraft now under flight test.

Once flight tests with the SIGINT suite are completed, further integration work will take place in Hamburg, Germany. Here, Lufthansa Technik Defense will also be in charge of certification.

Already, there are signs that Germany might increase its PEGASUS order to help meet a growing demand for airborne SIGINT products.

Speaking to the media last year, Jürgen Halder, vice-president of airborne SIGINT at Hensoldt, said: “If you look at the current geopolitical situation, even though any [one] aircraft can persistently monitor a vast area, there are unfortunately too many hot spots globally. So, we expect an additional rise [in aircraft numbers] to be coming eventually.”

Halder continued: “Discussions are starting in a very early phase, but it’s apparent that three aircraft are not sufficient, especially if you consider that the Euro Hawk program had already included much higher numbers of aircraft.”

For now, the first three German PEGASUS aircraft are due to be delivered between 2026 and 2028, and to become operational in 2027.

Germany can also look forward to expanding its airborne intelligence-gathering capabilities with the arrival of the first P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. While these eight aircraft will be primarily used for anti-submarine warfare, they can also act in an electronic intelligence collection role, with their standard electronic support measures (ESM) suite able to detect and geolocate enemy air defenses and monitor its overall electronic order of battles. Furthermore, the P-8 lends itself to modifications, such as the host for a secretive radar system, the AN/APS-154 Advanced Airborne Sensor, or AAS, although this has never been exported.

For now, Germany’s PEGASUS further underlines how the Global 6000 series is becoming one of the most popular choices for military special missions adaptations. In September of this year, South Korea confirmed its choice of the Global 6500 as the platform for its new airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, as you can read about here. Meanwhile, GlobalEye AEW&C aircraft, based on Global 6000 platforms, have been ordered by Sweden and the United Arab Emirates.

The military success of the Global 6000 series reflects the growing importance of business-jet-type aircraft for ISTAR missions. Platforms like these are becoming increasingly cost-effective, thanks in no small part to steady improvements in jet engine technology, and their popularity has been proven out by the U.S. Air Force, which opted for a Global 6000-based solution for its E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) program.

The U.S. Army, meanwhile, has ordered a Global 6500-based solution for its ME-11B High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES), which will be the service’s next-generation intelligence-gathering aircraft. These modified bizjets will have extensive sensor suites that include the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System-2B (ASARS-2B) and could have the ability to launch drones.

Nevertheless, with all these crewed, bizjet-based ISTAR platforms, there remain very real reservations about their survivability and even their utility during a conflict, especially during the types of high-end warfare that could be fought in the future against a near-peer adversary. Even when provided with external protection, the survivability of these aircraft in more contested airspace is very questionable. At the same time, while new sensors certainly offer improved capabilities, such aircraft may very well have to get within range of longer-range air defense systems to gather useful intelligence.

Overall, growing tensions in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region, and the increasing likelihood of NATO nations and their allies having to face peer or near-peer adversaries in future contingencies, mean that there is a particular appetite for platforms that can help keep track of hostile electromagnetic orders of battle and enemy communications. With that in mind, and considering the effi the Global 6000 series and similar bizjet-based solutions look set to find other customers in the special missions realm for the foreseeable future.

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WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney was the public face of the George W. Bush administration’s boundary-pushing approach to surveillance and intelligence collection in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

An unabashed proponent of broad executive power in the name of national security, Cheney placed himself at the center of a polarizing public debate over detention, interrogation and spying that endures two decades later.

“I do think the security state that we have today is very much a product of our reactions to Sept. 11, and obviously Vice President Cheney was right smack-dab in the middle of how that reaction was operationalized from the White House,” said Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor.

Prominent booster of the Patriot Act

Cheney was arguably the administration’s most prominent booster of the Patriot Act, the law enacted nearly unanimously after 9/11 that granted the U.S. government sweeping surveillance powers.

He also championed a National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program aimed at intercepting international communications of suspected terrorists in the U.S., despite concerns over its legality from some administration figures.

If such an authority had been in place before Sept. 11, Cheney once asserted, it could have led the U.S. “to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon.”

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies still retain key tools to confront potential terrorists and spies that came into prominence after the attacks, including national security letters that permit the FBI to order companies to turn over information about customers.

But courts also have questioned the legal justification of the government’s surveillance apparatus, and a Republican Party that once solidly stood behind Cheney’s national security worldview has grown significantly more fractured.

The bipartisan consensus on expanded surveillance powers after Sept. 11 has given way to increased skepticism, especially among some Republicans who believe spy agencies used those powers to undermine President Trump while investigating ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign.

Congress in 2020 let expire three provisions of the Patriot Act that the FBI and Justice Department had said were essential for national security, including one that permits investigators to surveil subjects without establishing that they’re acting on behalf of an international terror organization.

A program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence, was reauthorized last year — but only after significant negotiations.

“I think for someone like Vice President Cheney, expanding those authorities wasn’t an incidental objective — it was a core objective,” Vladeck said. “And I think the Republican Party today does not view those kinds of issues — counterterrorism policy, government surveillance authorities — as anywhere near the kind of political issues that the Bush administration did.”

As an architect of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney pushed spy agencies to find evidence to justify military action.

Along with others in the administration, Cheney claimed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida. They used that to sell the war to members of Congress and the American people, though it was later debunked.

The faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq is held up as a significant failure by America’s spy services and a demonstration of what can happen when leaders use intelligence for political ends.

The government’s arguments for war fueled a distrust among many Americans that still resonates with some in Trump’s administration.

“For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of the Office of National Intelligence, said in the Middle East last week.

Many lawmakers who voted to support using force in 2003 say they have come to regret it.

“It was a mistake to rely upon the Bush administration for telling the truth,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said on the invasion’s 20th anniversary.

Expanded war powers

Trump has long criticized Cheney, but he’s relying on a legal doctrine popularized during Cheney’s time in office to justify deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats in Latin America.

The Trump administration says the U.S. is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has declared them unlawful combatants.

“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Oct. 28 on social media. ”We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

After 9/11, the Bush-Cheney administration authorized the U.S. military to attack enemy combatants acting on behalf of terror organizations. That prompted questions about the legality of killing or detaining people without prosecution.

Cheney’s involvement in boosting executive power and surveillance and “cooking the books of the raw intelligence” has echoes in today’s strikes, said Jim Ludes, a former national security analyst who directs the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.

“You think about his legacy and some of it is very troubling. Some of it is maybe what the moment demanded,” Ludes said. “But it’s a complicated legacy.“

Vladeck noted an enduring legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration was “to blur if not entirely collapse lines between civilian reactions to threats and military ones.”

He pointed to designating foreign terrorist organizations, a tool that predated the Sept. 11 attacks but became more prevalent in the years that followed. Trump has used the label for several drug cartels.

Contemporary conflicts inside the government

Protecting the homeland from espionage, terrorism and other threats is a complicated endeavor spread across the government. When Cheney was vice president, for instance, agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, were established.

As was the case then, the division of labor can still be disputed, with a recent crack surfacing between Director Kash Patel’s FBI and the intelligence community led by Gabbard.

The FBI said in a letter to lawmakers that it “vigorously disagrees” with a legislative proposal that it said would remove the bureau as the government’s lead counterintelligence agency and replace it with a counterintelligence center under ODNI.

“The cumulative effect,” the FBI warned in the letter obtained by The Associated Press, “would be putting decision-making with employees who aren’t actively involved in CI operations, knowledgeable of the intricacies of CI threats, or positioned to develop coherent and tailored mitigation strategies.”

That would be to the detriment of national security, the FBI said.

Spokespeople for the agencies later issued a statement saying they are working together with Congress to strengthen counterintelligence efforts.

Tucker and Klepper write for the Associated Press.