Technical experts from the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) and the NATO Communications and Information Systems Group (NCISG), were on hand to provide support before, during and after the main exercise phases.
The NCIA played an important role in this exercise, not only preparing all the CIS and networks for the NATO Command Structure but also acting as the Service Management Authority (SMA) for the mission network. The mission network is established when all the services of the Allies' individual networks are federated.
The team was responsible for installing, configuring, testing, operating and maintaining the required services to fulfil the information exchange requirements. Additionally, NCIA provided the Director of Interoperability Testing throughout all phases of the exercise to ensure that the agreed design and configuration was adhered to by all mission network participants.
"Steadfast Cobalt is a mission preparation exercise where all units involved verify and validate connectivity, and more importantly, assure that all information exchange requirements are covered in order to enable commanders to execute command and control," said Andres Bulk, Interoperability Test Director for the exercise and Senior Interoperability Engineer at NCIA.
The Steadfast series of exercises continuously develop the capabilities required for future NATO missions. Steadfast Cobalt, sponsored by NATO Allied Command Operations (ACO) strengthens command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR). The 2024 iteration focused on ensuring NATO's interoperability of deployable and static CIS systems and services with the systems and services of Allied forces assigned to SACEUR.
"The national forces who have contributed with their Communications and Information Systems equipment to the mission network have worked hard to comply with the latest technical Spiral Specification from the NATO-led Federated Mission Networking (FMN) Initiative, enabling the successful federation of their services with those of the NATO Command Structure," said Nicholas Lambert, Team Lead for the Mission Network Service Management Authority.