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The technology gap surprisingly is a relatively manageable issue; national interests pose more of a chasm.
The greatest challenge facing NATO interoperability is the desire of individual nations to safeguard information and technology from their allies, according to the general manager of the agency tasked with enabling coalition interoperability.
Nations with extensive data collection and processing systems are reluctant to share all elements of detailed information with even longtime allies, lest sensitive intelligence and technology aspects are revealed. And, many useful information technologies and systems developed by an individual nation are subject to export controls, which hinders their acceptance and implementation by other NATO nations.
Ensuring coalition interoperability amid these conditions is complicated by the military transformation that is empowered by the rapid evolution of information technologies. The NATO Consultation, Command and Control (C3) Agency, or NC3A, is striving to enable coalition interoperability both through technological advances and by overcoming the political-cultural barriers that hinder interoperable military operations.
The NC3A faces a tougher task than its national equivalents because it must bring together systems that are designed to address national needs, which often differ widely even among member nations. Not only must these systems interoperate among other national systems, they also must interoperate with NATO systems and networks.
Dag Wilhelmsen, NC3A general manager, offers that the agency hopes to allow the alliance to address coalition interoperability through "the ability to operate as an unbiased coherent agent." The NC3A would be able to assist nations in finding good, workable solutions between national systems and international infrastructures.
Wilhelmsen categorizes the challenge of achieving coalition interoperability in three different areas: the technical area, which focuses on architectures and standards; the programmatic area, which involves affecting national programs to achieve interoperability; and the political and cultural levels.
The NC3A general manager is unhesitating in his declaration that the political and cultural arenas pose the greatest challenge to NATO coalition interoperability. The ability to establish multilateral, trusted information-sharing environments that can be effective in a coalition setting hinges on solving that challenge, he states.
The political consensus that drives a coalition to function in an operation is not necessarily a permanent and fully multilateral base, Wilhelmsen continues. In many cases, a set of bilateral arrangements must be established...