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06 23 2023

NATO's premier interoperability exercise enables federated connectivity

NATO Communication and Information (NCI) Agency experts supported the Coalition Warrior Interoperability eXercise in Bydgoszcz, Poland, from 5 to 23 June 2023.

Interoperability is central to NATO's mission and makes multinational operations possible. Organized by the Allied Command Transformation (ACT), NATO's annual Coalition Warrior Interoperability eXploration, eXperimentation, eXamination, eXercise (CWIX) took place again this June, putting the interoperability of Alliance and Partner command and control systems through rigorous testing to ensure their integration and readiness.

The aim of CWIX is to ensure that NATO Partners and Allies can communicate effectively and operate together on a federated NATO network during missions and operations.

Around 1,900 registered participants from close to 40 Allied and Partner nations participated in CWIX 2023, seeking to improve effectiveness of their people, processes and technologies in a stable, multi-domain, secure coalition environment.

The NCI Agency worked alongside the exercise lead and participants to ensure the success of CWIX 2023. Over 100 Agency experts were deployed to the Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland, to participate in the exercise. The Agency's team delivered various communication and information system services and technology during the exercise, including assistance conducting over 20,000 capability tests on 406 active capabilities in addition to supporting the Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network (CFBLNet), CWIX's partner-centric testing network.

The CFBLNet is a secure federated global information-sharing infrastructure used to solve interoperability challenges and detect inconsistencies in existing and future capabilities in the area of Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR).

A core focus of CWIX 2023 is the Federated Mission Networking framework, a multinational mission framework that allows NATO, national and multinational units to work together on one comprehensive network, while retaining ownership of their individual networks. The Federated Mission Networking framework creates operational effectiveness through its governance and streamlined processes and protocols, which are followed by participating nations. Federated compliance enables operations, ensuring that nations are interoperable and can effectively communicate with each other on missions, operations and exercises.

To ensure the improvement of operational information exchange between nations, CWIX serves as a test-ground for the Federation Mission Network. The capabilities and innovations tested during CWIX feed into the Mission Network and help create standards, which are followed by all NATO and Partner federated affiliates during missions, operations and exercises in the following year.