The Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) is the 21st Century airborne reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance, and target acquisition (RISTA) system designed to provide targeting support to Army commanders in Force XXI and Army After Next (AAN) operations. The ACS provides intelligence and targeting to the land component commander (LCC) and warfighters at all echelons and gives them operational flexibility to support missions from peace to operations other than war (OOTW) to low intensity conflict (LIC) to major regional conflicts. ACS operations can be conducted using an organic ground station linked with manned aircraft, or a mix of manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to support rapid identification, location and targeting of high payoff targets operating across the battle space. The ACS consists of three major component groups: the Airborne Platform Subsystem (APS), the Ground Processing Facility (GPF), and a suite of modular sensors, processors and reporting equipment know collectively as the Airborne Mission Equipment Subsystems (AMES). The APS and AMES are linked via terrestrial or satellite datalinks to a Ground Processing Facility (GPF). The ACS system will be interoperable with the emerging Distributed Common Ground Station (DCGS) infrastructure (to include level 4 interoperability with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) at the Army and Joint level. ACS will have an open architecture capable of accepting the integration of modular components for future performance enhancements. The system will be configurable to accommodate mission and operational requirements