From the early days of the establishment of the NATO Command and Control Centre of Excellence, now 17 years ago, the Centre has been studying NATO’s interoperability challenges. These issues refer to the ability to act together in multinational formations and with multiple actors in a coherent, effective, and efficient way in order to achieve the mandated mission. The NATO C2COE considers Federated Mission Networking (FMN) one of the main initiatives to address interoperability. FMN aims to improve information exchanges to support C2, with its main element being decision-making.
The FMN seminar 2024, a gathering of high-level decision-makers, military leaders, and subject matter specialists, is a forum to discuss the FMN concept and promote its continuous implementation. The Netherlands is hosting the fifth FMN seminar, which will be held from June 24-27 in The Hague.
For the 2022 annual overview, Centre member Frank Gubbels published an article on this topic, which remains relevant. It was based on a presentation Frank gave during the fourth FMN seminar in 2022 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. His observations highlighted the need for FMN and openly and directly sketched the numerous challenges for the Affiliates and the institutionalized working bodies in this federation of the willing. There was no naming, shaming, or blaming, but also no NATO politeness in his presentation.
This is an open invitation to carefully read through his statements and determine for yourselves the progress made since.
Link to the article: https://c2coe.org/download/natos-interoperability-challenge-is-fmn-on-its-own/
