The Desirability of a NATO-central Database

For a decade, NATO nations, both on their own and within NATO groups have performed studies in the field of Twodimensional Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (2D-ISAR) and High Resolution Radar (HRR) Range Profiles. During that work high-quality radar imagery data of aircraft has become available through measurement campaigns. It was shown that the acquisition of a sufficiently large and representative reference database is a difficult and laborious process. Other database properties, such as its contents, size, upgradability, retrieval speed, operational use, etcetera have not received sufficient attention within these studies. In the future, NATO may be playing a major role in maintaining a NATO central database of radar signatures. This paper provides an initial understanding of the operational implications for performing such a task. It argues that, instead of providing a central database to NATO nations, NATO should stimulate the use of decentralized classifiers and databases and ensure that coalition partners can access them via a data network in operational situations.