CWIX 2012 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction
CWIX provides an opportunity for NATO Nations, Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) Countries, Partners across the Globe (PaG) and NATO Commands and Agencies to prove, disprove and improve NATO, National Coalition Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Interoperability. CWIX is also a forum for interoperability testing of operational systems currently in use in NATO-led operations by commands such as International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and NATO Response Force (NRF). CWIX is a Military Committee directed, NAC endorsed and C3 Board guided Bi-SC annual programme designed to support the continuous improvement in interoperability for the Alliance. Contributing to the aims of the Connecting Forces Initiative, CWIX related to many operational goals. An important aim of the initiative is to ensure that forces can work together through practice. The interoperability testing of capabilities from various operations coupled with future versions and experimental capabilities is a good gauge of future interoperability. In addition, while CWIX is not a training event, some nations send their systems and network engineers to CWIX to get hands-on experience on a simulated operational network. This is the second year that CWIX used the Joint Force Training Centre, Bydgoszcz, Poland as a primary execution site. There were also multiple distributed sites in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Greece and the United States. The box below presents the relevant statistics for 2012.

2012 Statistics NATO Member participation: Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, United States of America Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council participation: Austria, Finland, Sweden Partners Across the Globe participation: New Zealand. NATO Organisations participation: HQ SACT, SHAPE, JFTC, JWC, JFC HQ Brunssum, NC3B, NC3A, SOF HQ, NCSA HQ, NACMA, C2 COE, JCBRN COE, JALLC Observers: Czech Republic, Lithuania, South Korea Trials: 143 Test Interactions: 7694. Participants/visitors: over 1000

There were 143 capability configurations present during the 10 day testing period. Capabilities were assigned into one of three categories: Fielded are capabilities in their current configuration which are deployed in current operations or in use by their supporting Nations. Developmental are next generation or versions of existing fielded capabilities. Experimental are new technologies that are in the initial phase of development.

75 percent of the capabilities are fielded or developmental and the remaining are experimental capabilities.
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Highlights for 2012

National participation increases as nations see value in testing Sixteen Nations participated in interoperability testing by bringing national capabilities to test with other Nations and NATO capabilities. CWIX offers a highly attractive, well organized venue that has become an important part of the interoperability testing and for some nations a part of their procurement strategy. CWIX can be an important milestone in a systems life cycle. This has and is part of a cost-effective strategy to improve C4ISR capabilities without having to set-up and fund a national venue. It is important to note, CWIX does not fund national system participation. Nations fund the entire cost of bringing national capabilities, engineering effort and transportation. To further increase value, some nations bring network and system engineers to gain hands-on experience. The collaborative human network, which springs up each year at CWIX, is perhaps one of the most important benefits. Afghanistan Mission Network Interoperability Testing 28 capability configurations were involved now or intend to be involved in the future on the Afghanistan Mission Network participated in CWIX. The majority of the testing involved the Battlespace Awareness mission thread. Specifically, CWIX focused on COP management, Battlespace Object Management and Air and Ground Track Management. NC3A JCHAT Analysts discovered a solution to an one-way chat problem that has been hampering the forces in ISAF. The tested solution was forwarded to the AMN change management team for immediate inclusion into the network. In addition, the Joint Fires Focus Area successfully tested the ability to exchange and synchronize target intelligence records and targeting lists from the USA Modernized Integrated Database (MIDB) via an automated web interface with the NATO Integrated Command and Control Database (ICCDB) and Joint Targeting System (JTS). Cyber Defence Finland, Hungary and Poland offered three capability configurations to test cyber defence. The primary goals of the cyber defence testing were to detect an attack or malware, to block suspicious activity and report to the network administrators. A secondary goal was to improve cooperation between Nations as well as exchange ideas and experiences. One short term goal was to create formatted reporting messages to distribute warnings, defensive notifications and defence measures to allow rapid reporting. As this was a pilot event created to share experiences and evaluate security capabilities the overall outcome was very encouraging. Lessons learned and possible improvements were documented in the focus area report and will be a building point for 2013. Tactical Edge Data Solutions (TEDS) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) TEDS JCTD is a combined effort between NATO ACT and the United States, Finland, France, Netherlands and Poland to test a joint data exchange strategy. The TEDS coalition tested enhanced Joint and Multinational interoperability using a C2 Core capability and a XML data model. All trial objectives, with the exception of tactical graphics messages between two nations using MIP, were successful. Net-Centric information sharing was facilitated by the use of web services. This webenabled information sharing produced a common operational picture amongst all the partners. The
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test results and feedback will be used to improve the next version of C2 Core to be released in late 2012 and continue toward implementation of the STANAG Transformation Framework (STF). Modeling and Simulation While modelling and simulation were present in previous CWIX, this year the importance of simulation in interoperability testing was significantly emphasized. The Danish Naval Tactical Trainer provided a flexible and scalable simulation solution to generate and execute naval battle space scenarios. The trainer provided different sensor report. These reports were then fused by maritime C2 capabilities to produce tracks that were correlated and filtered similar to real world activities. The simulation injects were also applied to a joint distributed scenarios.

Outlook for 2013

CWIX will continue to be one of the leading agents of transformation for the command. The need for interoperable capabilities both at the NATO and national and strategic and tactical levels remains constant. The CWIX 2013 planning cycle begins with an Exercise Specification Conference (ESC) in September 2012. Based on initial discussions and feedback from the 2012 execution, we expect to see an increased interest from the operational community as well as from the nations. CWIX 2013 will be held from 3rd to 20th June 2013. CWIX 2013 will continue to be a distributed testing event as several nations have indicated that they will test from national laboratories. The Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland will remain the primary execution site.

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