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05 23 2014

NATO Land Command & Control (C2) system achieves major milestones

The software provides a suite of Functional Services to operational staffs to support the planning, execution and the assessment of land-based operations and is the primary tool for any land mission to:

• Enable and improve the effective Command & Control of NATO Land Forces;
• Support NATO commanders in their decision making process;
• Improve information exchange: horizontally within the Land Headquarters and with other components; vertically through the chain of command.

LC2IS interfaces with other NATO Functional services and National Land C2IS enabling the sharing and exchange of mission critical information to build the Recognised Ground Picture and enrich the Common Operational Picture.

The programme is structured as a series of increments – 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. The initial increment, v1.0 was formally accepted on 24 April when the Investment Committee approved the Joint Formal Acceptance Inspection Report. This was the result of significant team work between Agency staff across The Hague, Brussels, Mons and the Sectors and required the team to document work from the former Agencies over the past five years including extensive hardware deliveries of 82 servers across 12 sites. This was made particularly challenging as none of the original staff remain on the project.

In parallel, LC2IS Increment 1.1 is now nearing completion. Final Acceptance of the authorized scope has been achieved in February 2014 and the service has been deployed to JFCS, NCISG, JFTC, JWC, NCISS and NCIA which are now under support by the NCI Agnecy. On 6 May, LC2IS was also authorized for deployment at LANDCOM, AIRCOM and MARCOM before Q1-2015. The initial deployment to ISAF has been suspended waiting for an operational decision on possible requirement on Resolute Support Mission.

LC2IS is also becoming of increasing interest to several NATO nations as part of their "NATO First" strategy of reusing NATO capabilities before investing in national projects. The 1st German-Netherlands Corp have requested to evaluate, test and obtain this new version of LC2IS.

The Operational Community (and especially SHAPE and ACT) have consistently provided good operational support for LC2IS, without which all this would not have been possible.

In the next few months the C2 Service Line will prepare the authorization request (TBCE) for the new Increment 2 with the plan to submit it to the IC by the end of this year. The definition of the Increment 2 requirement has started in 2013 under the sponsorship of ACT and is proceeding: LC2IS will take part at CWIX-14 in June 2014 and the 3rd Land C2 User Requirement Workshop will be held at the NCI Agency on 24-27 June 2014.