Coalition CINC 21 - Leading-Edge Information Technologies to Support Coalition Operations

Abstract : Over the last decade, the number of coalitions operations has significantly increased, necessitating greater interoperability with our Allies. Several organizational, cultural, system and technological issues need to be addressed to enable synchronization of operations and shared coalition situation awareness. In order to address Coalition Situation Awareness requirements and contribute to interoperability in future coalition operations, a four-nation collaboration known as Coalition CINC 21 (C-CINC 21) has been established between the United States, Australia, Canada and United Kingdom. C-CINC 21 participated in Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstrations (JWID) in 2001 and 2002, to demonstrate the use of portal technology and distributed collaborative services to share coalition information and to experiment with a coalition-shared infrastructure for geospatial access and with a number of collaborative planning and decision-support tools. This paper addresses a number of interoperability issues associated with coalition operations, describes the C-CINC 21 activities, draws lessons from the collaboration and outlines a way ahead for further collaboration.