Ukraine War Exposing NATO Interoperability Gaps.

• Author: Carberry, Sean

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia--NATO nations have provided billions of dollars' worth of military equipment and systems to Ukraine, and while that support has been critical to the country's defense against Russia's invasion, it has also shown that NATO systems aren't as interoperable as allies had expected.

That's led to a doubling down within the alliance on interoperability, said U.K. Royal Navy Vice Adm. Guy Robinson, chief of staff to NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, at the National Defense Industrial Association's JADC2: All Domain Warfare Symposium July 18.

NATO has been clear enough in setting and communicating standards and objectives to alliance members, he said.

"So, why aren't we as interoperable as we'd want to be? The answer then becomes, 'Well, having a standard is one thing, meeting a standard is something altogether different,'" he said.

"Allies will be able to meet those interoperability standards at different paces," he continued. "There's an investment to be made to meet those standards. And for some allies, they're trying to determine which standards they should be meeting. NATO standards are one thing, but sometimes they're pursuing interoperability goals with a certain partner, which may be different from the NATO one."

NATO is in the midst of a transition to Multi-Domain Operations, which is similar to the U.S. Defense Department's joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2, initiative. The multi-domain effort, which makes space and cyber warfighting domains rather than enablers and requires building out the command and control, is another level of complexity that requires additional standards for interoperability, he said.

"The complexity of getting everyone interoperable obviously goes up every time you have an ally coming to join the alliance," he said. "And it's great we've got more allies, but they all have to work through and be able to adopt these standards and adjust their capabilities as they acquire them to make sure that they are interoperable."

The U.S. Mission Partner Environment, which facilitates command and control among allies, provides a seam from JADC2 into the NATO environment, he said.

There is also NATO's Federated Mission Networking environment, "which allows standards to be developed and nations to follow those across the capability areas as well. And that's well established," he said.

Ideally, the alliance will adopt open systems to the greatest extent possible rather than resorting...