Ministry of Defence
NATO and the Federated Mission Networking (FMN) Initiative UK Voluntary National Contribution to the FMN Secretariat
The Challenge
The UK committed to become an Affiliate in the Federated Mission Networking (FMN) initiative. The FMN sought to build on lessons learnt from involvement with Afghan Mission Network (AMN); providing interoperable Communications and Information Systems to support coalition operations. Each FMN Affiliate Nation was to provide a Voluntary Nation Contribution (VNC) Liaison Officer to the FMN Secretariat (based at Supreme Allied Headquarters in Europe).
As a result of AsystsU’s seminal role in developing Architectural Methods and Conventions for the AMN, AsystsU were contracted to provide a service to fulfil the UK VNC Role.
Our Solution
Our Chief Enterprise Architect provides the presence and contribution to the FMN on behalf of UK MOD as the Liaison Officer and leads the AsystsU service offering. Key functions of the service provided by us include:
- Expert knowledge of NATO Mission Thread development;
- Development of methods and conventions for the production of FMN Mission Threads;
- Deep specialist Enterprise Architecture expertise;
- Regular liaison between the FMN and UK military leadership;
- Contribution to a range of Working Groups (WG) and international seminars (generating FMN Ready Forces for a Coalition Operation); and
- Extensive knowledge and experience of the activities, practices and procedures of the FMN Working Groups.
The Result
The UK VNC has proposed and established an Architecture Task Force to bring together the wide range of architectural activities across the FMN WGs; thus, developing the ability to exploit Enterprise Architecture in the form of FMN Mission Threads in each of the FMN WGs.
Understanding the FMN WGs enabled us to create a detailed WG interaction model. This has increased the effectiveness of the FMN WGs and coordination with the NATO Strategic Commands (Allied Command Operations (ACO), Allied Command Transformations (ACT), and the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency) and the sub structures of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control (C3) Board. Additionally, our involvement has dramatically enhanced the coordination of UK MOD engagement across NATO and the FMN.