Four years later, his career took him to the Netherlands where he worked in deployable communications in different NATO bodies. This included moving to the Communications and Information Systems (CIS) Sustainment Support Centre (CSSC) in 2010, as he knew the Agency would soon be formed and he wanted to be there from the start. And indeed, the CSSC is part of the Agency today.
Kessels' career has gone full circle. He is once again based in Verona since 2017, where he works as a site engineer in the Lughezzano Satellite Ground Station.
We sat down with Kessels to find out more about his career at NATO. We discussed how his 23 years of experience in the Alliance have shaped his memories and ideas for the future of the Agency.
What is your current role at the NCI Agency?
I am the Site Engineer at the Satellite Ground Station in Lughezzano. I have been working here for the last six years and I was very excited to move back after almost 15 years! I really enjoy the location and I already knew the team very well, having worked with them in the past.
My day-to-day job includes solving any issues that our technicians may encounter, so that they can successfully do their job and we can ensure the site operates smoothly 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the last years, I have also been responsible for activating the Satellite Ground Station in Verona and making it fully operational, to ensure we are delivering new, improved satellite capabilities to NATO.
What are Satellite Ground Stations and why are they important to NATO?
Satellite Ground Stations provide a link between fixed NATO CIS infrastructures and mobile CIS, like deployments and exercises, via satellite communications. The NCI Agency manages the four NATO Satellite Ground Stations and two ground terminals with more than 100 experts and military operators. These four stations are being upgraded to almost double the previous satellite communications ground coverage to enable NATO to do more with fewer stations. The two superstations are in Kester, Belgium, and Lughezzano, Italy, and the two smaller stations are in Greece and Türkiye.
What do you enjoy the most about working at the NCI Agency?
I really enjoy the atmosphere of being in a NATO entity, for the simple reason that it gives me the possibility to work with people from other cultures and nationalities. It was definitely an eye-opener for me to start working internationally, as I learned that there was more to life than the Belgian ways of working! This really broadened my horizons, and I think that is the case for everyone at NATO or any other international organization.
This may be old fashioned of me but something I also enjoy about the way we work is that if something needs to be done, we do it. No matter what, we will make sure things work, because if they do not, it can cause a threat to the safety and security of our people.
What is your most memorable moment in the NCI Agency?
It was definitely when we were upgrading our deployable network, by installing the first active directory in our networks. This was in 2005, when I was working in the first NATO Signal Battalion in the Netherlands. To put it simply, before this time, each NATO entity had their own server, which was controlled locally. We received new mobile systems and installed an active directory, which meant the new settings would apply to all the servers throughout NATO and they would now be centrally managed. It took a long time to complete this, with many late nights, but the outcome was very positive for NATO, which felt highly rewarding!