I/ITSEC NEWS: NATO Needs to Speak One Data Language

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ORLANDO, Florida — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization needs to speak in a unified data language in order to enable more efficient collaboration, officials said Dec. 4.

Communication plays a crucial role in NATO’s ability to operate jointly and efficiently in the multi-domain global battlefield, and “if you can talk, you can win,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. George Cushman V, modeling and simulation analyst at NATO Allied Command Transformation, said during a panel discussion at the National Training and Simulation Association’s Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference.

“That has not changed at all, but now we just have to … expand our vision of that, including systems, training systems, analysis systems, wargaming systems, operational mission command systems,” he said. NATO allies “need to be able to talk to each other in a common language, following common authoritative data, or at least the best data we can get … to use those things to push us further, faster and more effective.”

The alliance needs interoperable standards to share more data more efficiently across different enclaves of security. Data sharing can be “a pain in the butt,” but there have to be ways NATO can collaborate in the data space more efficiently and at speed, not only with allied nations but with industry and academia as well, Cushman said.

“There's no more such thing as sanctuary,” he said. “We cannot sit back, and we Americans can't sit back here like, 'Well, looks like that's your problem.' ... We are at risk. Every nation is at risk.”

NATO doesn't just need simulation standards, it also needs common data terminology, said Simon Skinner, product policy leader for training and simulation at Thales and vice chair of the NATO Modeling and Simulation Group.

“We need to adapt our models and simulation with dynamic mission operational data and move to a data-centric approach,” he said during the panel. “We need to expand our standards coverage to support analysis, mission preparation, logistics and other topics, and we need to handle the ingestion [and] analysis of data at the speed of need.”

NATO as an alliance has to be better when it comes to data sharing and interoperability standards, Cushman said.

“We need to do better than our adversaries. We need to do better than this constant changing environment to be able to react to it and implement those things at a pace that is relevant,” Cushman said. “Not plan for today, maybe get it developed tomorrow, and then [soldiers] see it in five, six years, and then when they see it, not only is it already out of date, it is not interoperable with the systems that we've already had.”

 

Topics: Global Defense Market