Press Release
4 October 2007
Senior NATO officials say incompatible command-and-control equipment has contributed to allied fatalities
LONDON, 4 Oct., 2007 - A lack of interoperable command-and-control (C2) equipment and intelligence-sharing networks among NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has contributed to allied fatalities that could have been otherwise avoided, according to senior NATO commanders.Jane’s International Defence Review reports that commanders say the issues are especially severe in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar district and others where the Taliban's insurgency movement is strongest, and where fatalities involving ISAF soldiers could have been avoided or minimised.
ISAF's interoperability problems "do not paint a very rosy picture", Major General Ton van Loon, NATO's chief of staff, Allied Land Component Command at Heidelberg, told NATO's fourth annual Industry Day on 27 September.
Jane’s reports that Gen van Toon completed seven months of ISAF command duty in Afghanistan in May. He stated: "I lost 38 soldiers in Kandahar. C2 and intelligence are NATO's biggest shortfalls in Afghanistan and they need our immediate attention."
"For myself, I had to have nine different systems sitting on my desk just to communicate with all my units. All these different national systems are useless and it is unacceptable that we don't have a common operational network and [battlefield] picture."
Jane’s International Defence Review reports that Major General Koen Gisbers, a communications specialist attached to NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT), asserted that, unusually, cost and product development are not the problem.
Noting that technology and distributed databases offer cheap and effective interoperability solutions ready for exploitation today, he said: "We want a distributed JISR [joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capability for ISAF in one year. There is no time to lose. Technology is not the issue: it's all there. It's how we put it together and loosen the rules of allies for sharing intelligence with each other."
The same sense of frustration is apparently felt at senior levels of the ACT, US General Lance Smith, the group's supreme allied commander, remarked to the Warsaw audience. Referring to ISAF's lack JISR, he said: "Why aren't the allies themselves demanding this? I'm losing troops because we don't have common JISR." (ENDS)
Editor’s notes: To speak to Nick Brown, Editor of Jane’s International Defence Review or for a full copy of the article as it will appear in this next month’s edition; please contact either Leah Turner, Press and PR Officer, Jane's Information Group, on +44 (0) 208 700 3922 or +44 (0) 772 582 3631 or email leah.turner@janes.com or Lauren Baker, IHS Inc, Director, PR and Media Relations, on +1 303 397 2615 or email lauren.baker@ihs.com
About Jane’s International Defence Review
Jane’s International Defence Review keeps you up-to-speed with current and emerging defence technologies, equipment and systems. Coverage includes upgrade programmes, strategic ad security issues, electronics, computing, operations and training. No other resource provides such considered in-depth coverage of air, land and sea platforms and systems.
About Jane’s Information Group
Jane’s, an IHS company (NYSE: IHS), is the leading open source information provider and conference organiser on defence, international risk and national security to governments, militaries, industries and academia around the globe. Jane’s is headquartered in London, and also has offices in Alexandria, Virginia; Singapore; Tokyo; Dubai; and Sydney, Australia. For more information, please visit our award-winning website, www.janes.com.
About IHS www.ihs.com
IHS (NYSE: IHS) is a leading provider of critical technical information, decision-support tools and related services to customers around the world. Our data and services are used in a broad range of industries including energy, defense, aerospace, construction, electronics, and automotive. IHS translates the value of our global information, expertise and knowledge to enable customer success and create customer delight on a daily basis. Ranging from governments and large multinational corporations to smaller companies and technical professionals in more than 100 countries, customers rely on our offerings to facilitate decision making, support key processes and improve productivity. IHS has been in business for nearly 50 years and employs 3,000 people in 35 locations around the world.
###
IHS is a registered trademark of IHS Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright © 2007 IHS Inc. All rights reserved.