In this paper a system termed VIGILANT + is outlined, which utilises situation awareness for the purposes of enabling distributed, autonomic, sensor management, so that savings on consumption of network resources can be achieved. VIGILANT + is a novel proposition allowing deployed, unattended, wireless sensor nodes to selforganise into dynamic groups and self-manage their transmissions efficiently, according to a current common mission objective. Firstly, a distributed situation assessment system named PORTENT models, detects and characterises potential situations occurring within an uncertain environment, using the metric, quality of surveillance information (QoSI). Secondly, a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) is utilised to understand and analyse the significance associated with the potential situation, primarily to enable deployed sensors to selforganise and assign themselves to mission objectives autonomously. Thirdly, a system is introduced for distributed autonomic transmission control, which enables the efficient management of sensor network resource consumption. Simulations have been undertaken to verify the integrated VIGILANT + concepts and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in improving network efficiency, without compromising the presentation of mission surveillance utility.