Expanding interoperability integrating interoperability tools in multinational exercises

Interoperability is essential to successful NATO joint and combined operations. NATO has built interoperability among Allies since its foundation. However, due to changes in the security environment since 2014, Allies now face new threats and challenges that require significant political, military, and institutional adaptation from the Alliance. Military adaptation has increased the multi-nationality of NATO’s tactical-level formations, especially those postured at high readiness. These developments require forces to integrate more deeply with a greater number of nations, which demands commensurate interoperability efforts from the Alliance. This requirement is predicted to continue to rise due to Alliance priority initiatives such as readiness, enablement, continued adaptation, and increased burden sharing.

This paper describes NATO’s new model for expanding interoperability to tactical echelons in response to those increasing demands. First, the article addresses why interoperability is more important now than ever for the readiness of NATO forces. It describes the Alliance’s five tools for interoperability and introduces a proposed sixth tool. The paper focuses on the recently introduced interoperability model, which will maximize the synergies between these interoperability tools. The model is illustrated with examples of building such synergies in NATO Exercise Specifications and Evaluation Plans. Finally, the paper addresses recent NATO insights and decisions and suggests a way ahead, recommending actions that defence leaders should take to expand interoperability.

 

By Vanessza Hegykozi* with the support of Rob Trabucchi*

The aim to build interoperable forces has existed since the foundation of the Alliance. Multinationality is central to the character of the Alliance, as it consists of 29 Allies with different national forces and a complex institution of several bodies all coming together to act as one. Therefore, interoperability[i], NATO’s ability to work together, is essential to effectiveness in and beyond operations and should be addressed as an integral part of all that NATO does.

NATO forces have reached a high level of interoperability through 70 years of combined exercises, standardization, multinational cooperation, and integrated headquarters. Nevertheless, the current, changed security environment requires adapted and reinvigorated efforts from the Alliance to keep its forces interoperable. 

Interoperability is known as an important capability multiplier of the Alliance, which enhances its operational effectiveness, strengthens its defence capabilities, and improves efficiency in the use of available resources. It is not only an essential ingredient for readiness, but also a precondition. To build multinational NATO forces that can respond rapidly in crisis, interoperability must be developed in advance, and different units must be able to operate together in peacetime. Multinational exercises and evaluations are essential for the Alliance to test its capabilities, validate its concepts, procedures, systems, and tactics in order to exercise working together efficiently and effectively. For instance, during a recent joint exercise conducted in Poland, US troops identified that their fuel nozzles are not compatible with Polish armoured vehicles. This interoperability gap was overcome by a simple adaptor fitting, but without conducting such multinational exercises both sides would have remained unaware of having incompatible equipment, possibly until a critical moment in an operation.[ii]

Today’s security environment, as the NATO Secretary General stated in his latest Annual Report (2018), is the most diverse, complex, and unpredictable security environment at any time since the end of the Cold War. An unprecedented range of threats, coming from state and non-state actors, cyber and hybrid attacks, challenges the Euro-Atlantic area.[iii]

In response to this fundamentally changed security environment, NATO has been adapting and reengineering itself to cope with these newly arisen threats. The year 2014 was a milestone in the history of the Alliance. In September 2014, at the NATO Wales Summit, responding to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, NATO nations committed to further strengthen the Alliance and agreed to increase their deterrence and defence efforts, including the readiness of Allies’ forces. The commitments made during the Wales Summit are considered as the most significant reinforcement of NATO’s collective defence since the end of the Cold War.

The Allies’ highest elected leaders endorsed a Readiness Action Plan (RAP) containing both assurance and adaptation measures for the Alliance’s strategic posture, to reform NATO to respond swiftly and effectively to emerging security challenges.[iv] The RAP’s adaptation measures include force packages to enhance the NATO Response Forces (NRF). Within this framework, Allies outlined the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). The VJTF is deeply multinational, demonstrates collective political resolve, and enhances deterrence. Allies also endorsed NATO’s Forward Presence to provide a continuous military presence in Eastern Europe.[v] These new high-readiness NATO forces are based on units provided voluntarily by framework nations and other contributing Allies. Importantly, they are also provided on a rotational basis. Their deep multi-nationality, “fight tonight” readiness posture, and rotational deployment all explain why these forces have become the centrepiece of NATO’s major joint exercises and dozens of multinational preparatory exercises.

Furthermore, this strategic military adaptation has also significantly increased the multi-nationality of NATO’s forces overall, which resulted in a changing paradigm of interoperability. To use ground forces as an example, in the past, NATO’s high-readiness forces were composed of large single-nation formations (corps and divisions) under multinational command only at the four-star level of command. Today, within the context of the Enhanced Forward Presence, the multinational battlegroups can consist of the contributions of eight Allies, led by a framework nation, to operate with the host nation’s forces.[vi] This increased multinationality demands commensurate interoperability efforts from the Alliance.

The establishment of these multinational forces builds on Allies’ preceding actions to enhance the role of exercises in enhancing NATO’s interoperability. In 2012, Allies’ heads of state and government had already declared their exercise and training programs as the central elements of “connecting” their forces. The Connected Forces Initiative (CFI),[vii] to include the NATO Training Concept 2015–2020, aims to “establish an enhanced exercise programme with an increased focus on exercising collective defence including practicing comprehensive responses to complex civil-military scenarios. The Connected Forces Initiative (CFI) we agreed in Chicago will be instrumental in ensuring full coherence of the training and exercise elements of the Readiness Action Plan.”[viii] Among the results of CFI and RAP, NATO conducted 104 exercises in 2018. In addition, 188 national exercises were associated with improving NATO interoperability.[ix]

NATO staffs and commands have been working to adapt the Alliance’s interoperability paradigm in response to the changing security environment and in step with NATO’s broader strategic adaptation and initiatives. The work centres on three components: to more closely integrate these tools for interoperability, to recognize at least one new tool, and to reemphasize the essential role of Allies as the Alliance’s main ‘capability developers’.

NATO currently recognizes five interoperability enablers, or tools. These are: standardization; education, training, exercises and evaluation; lessons learned; technical and other demonstrations, trials and tests; and finally, cooperative programmes.

NATO is also using lessons from individual Allies and from combined efforts to identify new interoperability tools. Allies recently pointed out that “force affiliation” can help to increase multinational interoperability just as it increases joint interoperability among their national forces. In force affiliation, specific units train and exercise together during peacetime to increase their day-one interoperability in crisis-response operations or conflict. National experience demonstrates that adequately established, trained, and exercised cooperation between forces and headquarters improves interoperability, even without creating permanent command and control (C2) relationships. To apply this lesson across the Alliance, the NATO Standardization Office (NSO) has proposed that force affiliation should be designated as a new, sixth NATO interoperability tool.

Standardization[x] is an essential tool to develop, maintain, and improve interoperability because it provides a common basis used by each of the other tools. Allies have developed and agreed to standards in the operational (procedural), materiel, and administrative fields. These standards are very diverse, ranging from a common doctrine for planning a military contribution to stabilization and reconstruction, through standard procedures for transferring supplies, right down to interoperable materiel such as having standard cartridges to make ammunition exchangeable.

Despite its crucial importance, the current standardization efforts alone are not enough for a multinational force to guarantee a satisfactory level of interoperability at the tactical level. Standardization must be used in conjunction with other interoperability tools to achieve and maintain multinational interoperable forces.[xi] Therefore, having a systematic approach to achieve the necessary synergies among these moving parts is essential to building interoperability. Putting it another way, to ensure interoperability, individual NATO interoperability tools will not be successful by themselves. Similarly, the success of one NATO interoperability tool (e.g., lessons learned) often depends on the success of others (e.g., exercises and evaluations). Therefore, it is necessary to employ all the interoperability tools in combination and use them in synergy.

To illustrate with the examples of exercises and evaluations, employing interoperability tools in combination starts with incorporating standardization agreements (STANAGs) and addressing interoperability in NATO Exercise Specifications and Evaluation Plans. This will promote unit training and preparation on the basis of commonly agreed procedures. It will also increase the utility of exercise and evaluation reports for improving NATO standards and enhancing readiness, especially for enhanced interoperability. The implementation of the aforementioned interoperability model and the synergetic use of interoperability tools require constant coordination from different NATO bodies and interoperability stakeholders.

To apply this example in practice, the NATO Standardization Office sends personnel to participate in selected multinational exercises run by the US Army at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) in Hohenfels, Germany. These “Brigade-and-below” events focus exactly on areas that the Allies are addressing in order to weld multinational tactical formations together in the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, NATO Response Force, and Forward Presence battlegroups. Only in multinational exercises can we truly learn lessons on interoperability between national forces. Fortunately, the JMRC hosts several such exercises each year. Recently, the NSO participated in full-spectrum exercises “Allied Spirit” and “Combined Resolve”, as well as the artillery focused “Dynamic Front”.

The JMRC has exceptional capabilities to precisely study every aspect of the events in these exercises. This allows their coaches/trainers, and through them the NSO, to identify what kind of lessons we must learn in order to close interoperability gaps. If we find that units do not often apply certain standards, the NSO highlights that in a NATO capability development program like those mentioned above. If we find that we should improve the standard itself, then the NSO can forward this to the experts who will update that standard and propose it for Allies’ agreement. Both of these actions are essential to ensuring that all units across all Allied forces can benefit from the experience of just a few units.

Today, it is important to make efforts such as these “the norm” across all exercises. For example, the “Exercise Specifications” for all major NATO exercises, from the tactical to strategic levels, should highlight increasing our interoperability as an exercise objective. Similarly, this action should extend to NATO evaluations. This is done through Evaluations Plans and Allied Command Operations (ACO) Forces Standards (AFS). 

To consolidate these gains, the North Atlantic Council has recently tasked its committees to monitor the use of NATO standards and to further integrate their efforts on interoperability across their various domains (e.g., communications and information systems, other materiel, doctrine, tactics, and logistics). Allied Military Representatives have recently agreed to take several actions in their national militaries to expand interoperability to tactical levels. Examples include checking on their forces’ use of NATO standards, making their national exercises more multinational, and sharing lessons. They also tasked NATO’s Strategic Commands and the NSO to deepen the links between the NATO programs, mentioned above, which they each respectively lead.

In addition, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) has recently directed in his annual guidance for exercises that interoperability will become an aspect of all NATO exercises. Allied Command Operations is also further integrating Allies’ standardization agreements (STANAGs), which are focused on interoperability, into their guidance for the conduct of evaluations, and into the actual checklists that evaluators use. Both are in the AFS, mentioned above.

Addressing interoperability tools through a systematic approach requires continuously sustained effort by all relevant stakeholders. There is a wide array of interoperability stakeholders involved in the implementation of the described interoperability model.

Allies, as the main capability developers and providers of the Alliance, are unquestionably central stakeholders and are themselves responsible for ensuring that their people, processes, and technologies operate effectively. The principle of self-help and the responsibility to maintain and develop their own capabilities is also anchored in Article III of the North Atlantic Treaty: “In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”[xii] Allies’ role is crucial in interoperability, and especially so within the standardization community. In the vast majority of all categories, Allies purchase the equipment and systems, conduct the tests and trials, the individual training, and the exercises. In standardization, they propose Standardization Agreements (STANAGs), provide subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop standards, make all decisions, and implement standards in their forces and defence institutions. In view of this, Allied governments have recently directed specific efforts to enhance NATO standardization. At the Wales Summit all Allies committed to “(...)ensure that their armed forces can operate together effectively, including through the implementation of agreed NATO standards and doctrines”[xiii], as well as to monitor progress for remedial action.

In addition to the individual member states and National Military Headquarters, the NATO Strategic Commanders and several NATO bodies in the HQ contribute to interoperability, such as the NATO Standardization Office (NSO), the Military Committee and its Standardization Boards, the Consultation Command and Control Board (C3B), the Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD), including their subordinate Main Armament Groups, and NATO’s Agencies.     

In order to integrate these various stakeholders’ use of different interoperability tools, NATO should establish coordination mechanisms. One such mechanism could be to appoint a designated “champion for interoperability” at the top level of the organization both in the political and military side who would both drive and coordinate initiatives aimed to enhance interoperability and would coordinate the many interdependent activities of the interoperability stakeholders. Moreover, NATO should further institutionalize interoperability efforts by establishing interoperability boards within the Strategic Commands and in the HQ. Finally, NATO should establish mechanisms to monitor progress and guide remedial actions, both in the military commands and in the North Atlantic Council’s committee system.

In conclusion, NATO’s current political, military, and institutional adaptation has renewed the focus on collective defence and readiness. This adaptation has significantly increased the need to enhance interoperability in NATO’s increasingly multinational tactical-level formations, which in turn requires the implementation of a new interoperability model.

This new proposed interoperability model is based on combining and employing the described interdependent interoperability tools, which, among other benefits, ensures that lessons learned from multinational exercises are incorporated into standards as laid out in the example above. The success of this model will depend on Allies’ political will and on the success of the continued coordination efforts between stakeholders.

 

About the Authors

Vanessza Hegykozi is a staff officer in the NATO Standardization Office, Policy and Coordination Branch. She received degrees in international relations at the University of Szeged in Hungary and at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. She has nearly five years of work experience in various sectors (intergovernmental, governmental, and the private sector) and, of these, one year of experience within NATO. 

Rob Trabucchi currently serves as the head of the Policy Section in the NATO Standardization Office. He has served in various positions at NATO Headquarters since 2009. His multinational military experience began alongside his first US Army School in 1990, and he has continued to educate himself across two alliances, four continents, and eight UN, NATO, and other multinational operations.

 

*The opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the NATO Standardization Office.

Notes

[i] According to the common NATO agreed definition, interoperability is “the ability to act together coherently, effectively and efficiently to achieve Allied Tactical, operational and strategic objectives.” The three dimensions of interoperability are human, procedural, and technical. People are the fundamental building blocks of the national elements that make up our multinational formations; therefore, this dimension also refers to shared language skills, terminology, experience, education, and training. The procedural dimension includes doctrines and policies. Well-trained and exercised common procedures ease the “control” function, which is otherwise challenging within multinational command and control. The technical dimension underpins multinational logistics, communications, intelligence, command, and everything that relies on them.

[ii] Elisabeth Braw and Hans Binnendijk, “For NATO, True Interoperability Is No Longer Optional,” Defense One, 18 December 2017.

[iii] The Secretary General’s Annual Report 2018.

[iv] Readiness Action Plan, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_119353.htm, accessed 16 September 2019.

[v] Deterrence and defence, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_133127.htm, accessed 16 September 2019.

[vi] Boosting NATO’s presence in the east and southeast, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_136388.htm, accessed 16 September 2019.

[vii] Connected Forces Initiative combines a comprehensive education, training, exercise, and evaluation program with the use of cutting-edge technology to ensure that Allied forces remain prepared to engage cooperatively in the future. It was agreed in the Chicago Summit in 2012. See https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_98527.htm, accessed 16 September 2019.

[viii] Wales Summit Declaration.

[ix] The Secretary General’s Annual Report 2018.

[x] Standardization aims to “support achieving, maintaining and enhancing interoperability” in order to improve efficiency in the use of available resources, strengthen Alliance defence capabilities, and enhance the Alliance’s operational effectiveness.

[xi] Center for Army Lessons Learned, Multinational Commanders Guide to Interoperability, Sep 2015.

[xii] The North Atlantic Treaty.

[xiii] Wales Summit Declaration.

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