Fighter aircrafts are generally designed for attack, defense or reconnaissance (recce) missions. Since unmanned systems like UAV’s and satellites are used for recce, the manned tactical recce assets will not be in produce anymore. In this situation, recce missions will be performed by any strike aircraft, as manned systems. Since UAVs designed for recce missions can only fly at lower speed and satellites can take photo at desired point lately, both of them are incapable of especially post attack recce needs. At this point, the importance of tactical manned recce, which has capability of high speed, all weather condition and low altitude is easily understood. Yet, a recce missions performed by a strike fighter reveals a concept dilemma between ISR and Non Traditional ISR (NTISR). For instance, if this aircraft takes information for recce with the help of its radar, SAR, targeting pods, this consept is called NTISR. But, if it executes mission with recce pods, this is called ISR. So, the question:"what kind of a recce architecture can solve this problem?" is defined as the main objective of the study.

In this study, Turkish Air Force (TurAF) recce architecture is analyzed and Gadget model is built as a new one. It provides modern strike aircraft to be included in architecture as a main recce systems, which is divided into two parts as "soft recce" and "smart recce” to execute "recce-based-attack". Furthermore, NTISR is defined as “Auxiliary Systems For Recce” and ISR-NTISR dilemma is solved with the help of 7-year-experience as reconnaissance pilot.

Date Published: 31 May 2013
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8713, Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems and Applications X, 871304 (31 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2012067

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8713:
Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems and Applications X
Daniel J. Henry; Davis A. Lange; Dale Linne von Berg; S. Danny Rajan; Thomas J. Walls; Darrell L. Young, Editor(s)