On 26 and 27 January 2015, NATO's Air Command Control and Information Services (AirC2IS) contractor presented the latest AirC2IS software baseline 3 (BL3) to the NCI Agency executives and guests. The demonstration took place at the Atos test facilities in Seville, Spain, and debuted the product of the AirC2IS BL3 development, which was completed in December 2014.
The AirC2IS product includes, the majority of the Tactical Ballistic Missile Defence (TBMD) planning functionality for AirC2IS Increment 1, an order of battle (ORBAT) management capability, and a tactical information display for situational awareness. After an extensive testing process, the BL3 product installation is planned for July 2015 at four NATO Command Structures sites: Allied Air Command (AIRCOM), Allied Joint Force Command (JFC) Brunssum, JFC Naples and Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM).
The General Manager (GM) of the NCI Agency, Directorate of Application Services (DAS), Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) Programme, and representatives from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) and the NATO Office of Resources, all attended the demonstration.
The demonstration lasted about 2 hours, and walked-through the typical workflows for ORBAT management; asset and resource management related to TBMD; threat course of action analysis; and TBMD defence design production. The participants were left with a positive impression of the state of completion of the capability, the fit for purpose, and the usability.
The GM remarked on the complexity of the integration of systems/services within the Bi-Strategic Command Automated Information System (Bi-SC AIS), and also encouraged the DAS to start to expose the AirC2IS capability to Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and Allied Command Operations (ACO), in order to prepare them for the upcoming deployment and operational testing.