Single European Sky - et sivilt program med militære konsekvenser

Norway is under EU legislation committed to the Single European Sky (SES) programme which was established in 2004. The motivation for the programme was foreseen challenges emerging from ever increasing air traffic in Europe. The main goal for the initiative is to facilitate a nonscattered European airspace of increased capacity. In parts of European airspace capacity is already at its maximum, and coordinated efforts are necessary in order to cope with an expected doubling of today’s traffic over the next 10-15 years. Increased air traffic efficiency may be achieved by means of new concepts and technology and increased collaboration across all air traffic involved in Europe. This effort should reduce the environmental impact, shorten delays, minimize costs, as well as increase safety. SES is a civilian programme which will in particular impact the Royal Norwegian Air Force (RNoAF) whilst not providing any increased military force. It is not possible to foresee the investments costs, nor to which level the Defence sector should be SES-compatible. However, this report claims that failing to comply with the upcoming SES-regulations will result in increased air space user charges. The report presents a civilian SES-analysis from a military viewpoint. The traditional distinction made between civilian and military tasks is becoming more clear in choices made for equipment and technology, and first and foremost regarding air surveillance. The civilian side reports on cost reductions through technological developments which are not capable of solving military tasks. However, resources and costs savings are potentially achievable through civilian-military deployment of systems for mutual use. For the air traffic controller the transfer from today’s ATM principle to performance based operations means a change from traffic control to traffic monitoring interrupted by occasional exception handling. SES is providing a reporting and monitoring system which is paving the way for airspace usage pricing. If military aircraft is not compliant, the air traffic controller will have to ”manually” guide the aircraft through airspace, which in such future semi automated processes will involve a cost inducing exception procedure. Additionally, the airline operators may forward this cost to their passengers, while the military do not have a consumer to bill. Defence must start spreading information across the nation on what their priorities are, including military airspace usage plans. The Defence airspace needs have traditionally been well understood by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Norway and the Norwegian Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP). Formerly the ANSP was collocated with the former CAA of Norway. The consultancy agency ATMI claims in their study that although technology is essential in SES, a lot is achievable through the human factor and through interaction between humans. I.e. if the Ministry of Defence is assisted by RNoAF to spread information about intentions of the RNoAF concepts and requirements, this will probably be well handled by for instance the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The Ministry of Transport and Communications possesses knowledge, which helped by the Ministry of Defence in turn, could help support the defence requirements towards achieving SES long term goals.