Bringing new digital capabilities to NATO exercise planning

The need for a more collaborative tool for NATO exercises planning

NATO and its member nations must make the best use of scarce resources, exploiting training synergies where possible in order to audit, track, and visualise levels of readiness and the cumulative training risk. This requires a transparent, cohesive and consistent training and exercise planning and management system that can provide the ability to connect forces, including existing NATO nations and authorised partners.

Complex, large scale military training exercises involving multiple military forces were being planned in spreadsheets as a part of the NATO Military Training and Exercising Program (MTEP). MTEP was also limited to NATO Command Structure exercises and needed to be expanded to include National voluntary inputs to gain an overall picture of NATO’s training. The existing in-house system was unable to meet requirements and high-level planning and collaboration often required the on-site participation of nations.

How we did it

Having successfully won an international competitive bid process and carried out a detailed implementation project, 4C delivered an interim operating capability (IOC) to the core eMTEP User Group. Working with that group and staff at NATO’s Joint Warfare Centre (JWC) and Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC), 4C further developed the solution to meet the needs of users across NATO’s military headquarters and national capitals.

Supporting NATO HQs and National Capitals

“Exonaut is used independently by multiple NATO nations and partners to plan military training and dynamically manage and analyse exercises,” says 4C Strategies Military Director, Brigadier (Ret’d) David Paterson.

electronic Military Training and Exercise Programme (eMTEP)

NATO wanted a more user-friendly, digital planning and management solution to support its high readiness goals, increase transparency – both within NATO HQs and between allies – and to facilitate efficient collaborative planning and working. NATO HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (HQ SACT) Deputy Chief of Staff, Joint Force Development (DCOS JFD) requested that any solution be a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software tool to support the NATO electronic Military Training and Exercise Programme (eMTEP). The responsibility for delivering NATO exercises across the Alliance has now transferred to Allied Command for Operations (ACO) in Mons. 4C continue to work closely with the Training and Exercises Branch (TREX) to support eMTEP and its further development to meet their needs.

Modified off-the-shelf solution

Our consultants and developers worked closely with the Allied Command Transformation (ACT) core user group to define, develop and implement Exonaut as a COTS based solution for the eMTEP requirement. This involved detailed requirements capture, capability demonstrations and development work to customise the existing software to ACT requirements. User training has been provided and the data from the old eMTEP was transferred across to the new system.

”Essentially, what we have delivered is a modified off-the-shelf solution,” continues David. “The solution that was initially provided has been developed and updated as new releases of the Exonaut platform have been deployed. For instance, it’s now possible to easily plan sub-activities within the main exercise and link them at different planning stages.”

Improved collaboration through a single version of the truth

When planning NATO exercises, NATO HQs and nations now have a single version of the truth, which was not possible with the old way of working. Planning can be done concurrently, remotely and in real-time, thanks to, in part, the intuitive dashboards and visual support tools, while users have secure, permission-based access to exercise data. Ultimately, collaboration between nations has improved, which supports the goal of providing better training and ensuring military readiness is at its peak.