Background
Due to the evolving strategic situations, NATO were looking to rapidly accelerate concept and capability development to get the best solutions in the hands of the warfighter. To achieve that they wanted a single authoritative source to shape the design, execution and exploitation of all trials and experimentation (T&E), particularly as the number of events continued to grow while resources remained limited. In practice, the scheduling, planning and reporting of T&E activities were happening in isolation and relied on disconnected software, creating coordination gaps, slowing progress and limiting the ability to fully exploit outcomes.
Challenge
Provide a user-friendly, NATO-ready solution for designing, planning, evaluating, and exploiting trials and experimentation. The system needed to connect strategic, operational, and tactical levels, and enable planners to align T&E activities over a centrally managed five-year horizon. It also needed to facilitate point-of-need observation collection, data analysis, and exploitation, while providing a framework to ensure lessons learned can be exploited, securely shared, and used to inform defence capability development across the alliance
Solution
TALOS Exonaut is a centralised digital platform for NATO T&E activity. It connects planning, design, execution, data collection, and evaluation within a common environment, providing a single version of the truth. Designed for use by experts and novices, it enables all T&E activities to be approved and populated centrally as part of a five-year programme of work. Real-time results and powerful analytics turn collected data into actionable insights, while AI-assisted reporting ensures that activity outputs are rapidly generated, shared, and applied across the alliance.
Benefits
TALOS Exonaut replaces fragmented processes with an integrated, collaborative approach. It gives planners a clear view of all activities, helping to avoid duplication and focus resources where they are most effective. A consistent methodology ensures that insights from each trial contribute to a wider body of knowledge, transforming isolated activities into evidence that informs operational decisions, future capability development, and measurable outcomes. The result is better use of data, faster decision-making, increased readiness. Ultimately, this strengthens the Alliance’s ability to innovate, adapt, and transform in a rapidly changing defence environment.
“TALOS Exonaut is a force multiplier for NATO experimentation. This has the potential to be the most significant accelerant to NATO transformation we’ve seen in years.”
Colonel Nick Waldron, Head of NATO ACTs EWB branch
Case in Point:
2024 vs 2025 at REPMUS & Dynamic Messenger
In 2024, experiment data collection for REPMUS & Dynamic Messenger was manually handled through spreadsheets via a centralised repository and email. The Evaluation, Analysis, and Assessment team (EAA) were required to compile and clean this data to extract basic analysis. Across the exercise, which involved over 1400 participants, 90 unmanned systems, ten warships and 17 nations, only seven OPREP surveys were captured. From such a small amount of data, it proved difficult to meaningfully inform operational decision-making.
Fast forward to 2025. TALOS Exonaut was deployed during REPMUS & Dynamic Messenger, which now had increased to over 2,000 participants, 260 systems and 22 nations. Users now submitted OPREP surveys within the TALOS mobile based application during the experimentation serials. The TALOS platform ensured data integrity, supported real-time updates, and applied strict role-based access controls. Integrated AI tools automatically detected themes, and generated concise summaries, which were exported in real-time into NATO’s federated data mesh, enabling wider analysis and faster insight across the alliance.
The results were clear. More than 600 OPREP surveys were submitted through the application, with all data instantly available through the system’s intuitive dashboards. This not only strengthened analytical outputs, but it also gave decision makers real time insight to shape the conduct of the experiment. Within Exonaut this can mean anything from a straightforward validation to a rerun, a targeted adjustment or a full pivot to further test a system.
What had been a fragmented manual process in 2024 became a live feedback loop. Thanks to the deployment of Exonaut, 2025 showed a step change in scale and operational relevance, as key insights were delivered during and post exercise to Command and NATO-level repositories.
