SEAD will be a key mission of the Eurofighter EK being developed for Germany, as evidenced by the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM). (Janes/Gareth Jennings)

A NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) has been established to explore airborne electronic attack (AEA)/suppression of enemy air defence (SEAD) concepts and technologies that could meet alliance needs for 2030 and beyond.

Chartered through the Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD), the NIAG Study Group 286 (SG-286) on SEAD Capabilities held a kick-off meeting during May. The study activity, lasting for approximately 18 months, will deliver a capability audit against NATO’s previously drafted AEA and SEAD concepts of employment (CONEMPs).

NATO’s Wales summit in 2014 agreed to a defence planning package with a priority for demanding air operations to inform defence investments and to improve the capabilities available in allied national inventories. Vision papers for AEA and SEAD, both approved by the CNAD in 2018, identified four principal focus areas: diversity of effects, survivable delivery systems, co-ordinated information capture and exchange, and synchronisation of effects. CONEMPs were subsequently developed for both AEA and SEAD, with these approved in 2020.