The NATO Communication and Information (NCI) Agency signed an agreement with U.S. Army Europe to increase NATO’s support for U.S. deployments in Eastern Europe, the agency said last Thursday.
Under the Joint Partnership Statement, the NCI Agency will provide new solution to U.S. Army Europe to help enhance how it interacts with other allied nations. This aims to help the U.S. elements of NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence in the East.
The enhanced presence refers to how at the 2016 NATO Warsaw Summit, the alliance decided to strengthen its deterrence and defense posture by establishing an enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. This presence will contain four multinational battalion-size battle groups. The U.S. is leading one of the battle groups set to deploy to Poland in April. Batallions based in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are led by the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany respectively
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, cheered the NCI Agency partnership.
“US Army Europe considers NCI Agency a strategic partner in establishing and maintaining robust, reliable Command and Control networks. The enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) provides a real opportunity to validate Mission Command in support of the NATO Command Structure and formations from four different Nations,” he said in a statement.
Hodges characterized the eFP mission as a forcing function to implement the full power of the Federated Mission Network concept “and prove NATO’s ability to quickly and seamlessly integrate multiple national forces providing a creditable example of assurance and deterrent within Europe.”
Hodges said the agency will support the U.S. Army by developing and implementing a “robust” operational network at Mission Secret level for the eFP mission. It will be done in collaboration with Allied Joint Force Command (JFC) Brunssum in the Netherlands and Multinational Corps Northeast in Szczecin, Poland.
“The eFP Mission Secret Command and Control network could be the first real world application of the Federated Mission Network concept and may prove value added to NATO alliance for years to come,” he added.
This network support will include the NCI Agency-provided Mission Information Room (MIR), a tool that uses the cloud to deliver the mission secret network and applications. The agency developed the tool and it is managed by JFC-Brunssum and JFC-Naples.
Hodges highlighted the MIR as a powerful concept and tool for multinational interoperability. “The MIR, if used properly, could be a ‘digital power projecting platform’ allowing for planning and collaboration in the earliest stages of an operation then quickly translate into Command and Control functions for the follow on phases of the operation,” the commander said.
The NCI Agency said U.S. Army Europe is its third customer to sign a Joint Partnership Statement after Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) in Izmir, Turkey and Allied Maritime Command in Northwood, UK.
The agency’s work with these partners is part of the NATO First Solution, which aims to re-use the capabilities that NATO develops under common funding as much as possible. This seeks to promote synergies between common and nationally-funded programs and services, the NCI Agency said.